6R Y\eR 



SRDeATI 



14 



l 



by tye TkuH^or of 

si TH<c WORLD BeAUTJFUL 



** 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

- £)DSUI — 

Chap. Copyright No.. 

Shelf___„-_b^p" 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AFTER HER DEATH 
STfje Storg of a Summer 



U 



This world is not conclusion, — 

A sequel lies beyond, 
Invisible as music 

But positive as sound. 

Emily Dickinson. 



AFTER HER DEATH 

Wyt Storg of a Summer 

BY THE AUTHOR OF 



n 



"THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL" (FIRST AND SECOND SERIES) 
AND "FROM DREAMLAND SENT" 



"The eager fate that carried thee 
Took the largest part of me" 



&%z 




BOSTON 
ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1897 









Copyright, 1897, 
By Roberts Brothers. 






John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO 

ONE WHOSE PRESENCE IN THE SEEN OR IN THE 

UNSEEN WOULD EVER MAKE FOR ME 

A "WORLD BEAUTIFUL," 

ffi&fe ILtttle £tors 

OF THE SUMMER AFTER HER DEATH 
IS TENDERLY INSCRIBED. 

"And she the rest will comprehend, -will comprehend " 



CONTENTS. 

— ♦ — 

Page 

What lacks the Summer? n 

From Inmost Dreamland 25 

Past the Morning Star 37 

In Two Worlds . 55 

Distant Gates of Eden 69 

Unto My Heart Thou livest so . . . 87 

Across the World I speak to Thee . . 105 



WHAT LACKS THE SUMMER? 

What lacks the Summer? 

light and savor, 

And message of healing the world above ! 
Gone is the old-time strength and flavor, 

Gone is its old-time peace and love ! 
Gone is the bloom of the shimmering meadow, 

Music of birds, as they sweep and fall, — 
All the great world is dim with shadow, 

Because no longer mine eyes can see 

The eyes that made Summer and life for me, — 
And that is all. 

Mary Elizabeth Blake. 



AFTER HER DEATH. 



WHAT LACKS THE SUMMER? 

" Star to star vibrates light ! can soul to soul 
Strike through a finer medium than its own ? n 




|UR friendship had always seemed to 
me one made for heaven rather 
than for earth; as of a nature 
adapted to different conditions 
from those ordinarily prevailing here ; and 
after the first bewildering agony — caused by 
the tidings of her death — was over, I began 
to realize how that subtle and curiously in- 
sistent telepathic communion between us 
seemed to adjust itself anew and became more 
clear and intense. But, ah, that first flash of 
bewildering pain ! Will even eternity be long 
enough for its remembrance ever to be dimmed ? 



12 After Her Death. 

It was a June morning in Paris. For two 
weeks preceding I had been so strangely sad, 
so desolate and distraught that the days were 
a problem to me. And why ? I could not 
imagine. Some three weeks previous I had 
fared forth on that first voyage to foreign lands 
which always prefigures itself in life as an 
experience that can never be repeated. Other 
visits may be as happy, or happier ; but there 
is a thrill in one's first glimpse of Europe that 
— as Mr. Stoddard sings of that indescribable 
sensation that " follows youth with flying 
feet " — is one that " never comes again/' 
whatever better and finer things, perchance, 
may come. The voyage had been an ideal one, 
full, to me, of a curious uplift of feeling that 
suddenly changed, the day we landed, to a 
sadness and desolation inexpressible, and for 
which no adequate cause could be even faintly 
conjectured. No letters or cablegram of de- 
pressing nature had reached me ; and still, on 
landing at Liverpool after the happy voyage 
on the good steamer " Pavonia," I was abso- 
lutely unable to fulfil a previously arranged 



What Lacks the Summer? 13 

programme of proceeding to London by a 
detour to Strat ford-on- A von and Oxford, with 
leisurely loitering, and could only take the 
first train to the great metropolis, trusting 
that its rush of life might exorcise the strange 
spell that was flung over me. 

This swift change of feeling from exhilara- 
tion of spirits to an unutterable desolation 
was initiated by an experience for which I can 
suggest no explanation ; but the occurrence 
was one which leaves an impress that will for- 
ever stand as a crisis hour in life. It was this. 

On our last night on shipboard we had en- 
joyed the usual merry time of the " Captain's 
dinner " with its gala and laughter, and had 
retired with the happy anticipations of landing 
at Liverpool in the early morning. I had been 
asleep for some hours when, suddenly, as if by 
an electric shock, I found myself standing on 
the floor of my stateroom, with the quiver of 
a current of electricity pervading me from 
head to feet as if I grasped a strongly charged 
battery. I turned on the electric light and 
looked at my watch. It was nearly four in 



14 After Her Death. 

the morning. The words I had just heard — 
not with the outer ear, but with some inner 
sense — vibrated in the air. For I had seemed 
to see standing, I knew not where, three forms, 
which, by the same inexplicable inner sense, I 
knew were in the ethereal, not the natural, 
world: I seemed, too, to know that one of 
these had but just entered that world, and I 
heard her say, in tones of mingled joy, amaze- 
ment, incredulity, and triumph, " Is this all ? 
It is all over ! " 

Then I said to myself : a Some one I know 
has just died, — some one whose death will 
make the greatest difference to me." Yet, 
strangely, I did not think of her, — in whose 
presence or absence the entire world always 
changed to me, — she with whom I constantly 
lived in thought, whether we were together 
or whether half the world stretched its space 
between us. If this were a creation of fiction 
and not a narration of actual fact, I should 
record that my first thought was of her ; that 
I recognized it was her voice that thrilled 
through my dreams, and startled me, with a 



What Lacks the Summer ? 15 

force that fairly shot me from a sound slumber 
to find myself standing, — it would be a more 
rhythmic sequence ; but this is not an imagi- 
native tale : it is the record of an actual expe- 
rience. I did not think of her, and it could 
almost be added that it was the only moment 
since I had known the happiness of meeting her 
that she was not in my thoughts. Almost at 
once, too, I again fell into a deep sleep, which 
was incongruous with the startled shock, and 
slept so soundly that the pretty stewardess was 
quite discouraged in her attempts to induce me 
to rise at the necessary hour for leaving the ship. 
But on awakening in the morning that dread 
desolation, unanalyzed and unaccountable, set- 
tled down over me. Had I been shipwrecked 
and left alone on an island in the sea, I could 
not have been more — and I fancy I should 
have been less — desolate. For it is invari- 
ably true that when all of the visible fails us, 
the invisible is potent to protect and comfort. 
It was in vain that I attempted to combat 
this apparently idle depression. It could not 
be reasoned away ; but, as I said, it was so" 



16 After Her Death. 

overpowering that I abandoned perforce the 
anticipated tour to the home and haunts of 
the bard of Avon, and the visit to classic Ox- 
ford, which had been one of the most prized 
anticipations, and went directly to London. 

Still, the sense of unutterable desolation 
persisted, and the six weeks planned for 
London were reduced to six days, when, in 
a kind of desperate attempt to break the 
spell, I departed for Paris. While in Lon- 
don nothing had so enchained me as the 
stately, solemn beauty of Westminster Abbey. 
And perhaps the most impressive thing in the 
old abbey was not the majesty of sculptured 
marbles, or even the marvellous magnificence 
of the Chapel of Henry VII., but, instead, 
the little old Chapel of St. Faith. It is a 
very small one, of rude stone, — ceiling, walls, 
and floor, — lying between the chapter-house 
and the south transept. Over the old altar 
is a faded picture in which one dimly traces 
the outline of St. Faith above the crucifixion. 
On the table below are a crucifix and two tall 
candles, and on the altar a Latin inscription 
which runs, in translation : — 



What Lacks the Summer? 17 

" From the burden of rny sore transgression, 
sweet Virgin, deliver me : make my peace with. 
God and blot out mine offence." 

An inscription at the entrance enjoins that 
no word shall ever be spoken within it ; that 
it shall be kept solely for silent prayer. A 
tablet on one wall records that by the wish of 
Dean Stanley the body of Bishop Mcllvaine 
of Ohio rested in this chapel during the journey 
from Florence to the United States, and that 
his life and work "helped to draw together 
England and America in one communion of 
faith and love." Something in the atmosphere 
of the place sustained and soothed me in an 
exceptional way, and I found myself daily 
kneeling at the old altar in the silence, with 
perpetual prayer and thought for her, though 
I did not realize that there was hardly 
more than the usual tender turning to her, 
and perhaps there was not. All my life, so 
to speak, had been so magnetized toward her 
that this feeling could only increase with the 
increased fulness and depth of years. 

For our friendship, on my part, had really 
2 



18 After Her Death. 

begun long years before she dawned upon my 
vision. She was so richly endowed that even 
in her earliest youth her powers expressed 
themselves in a way that the fame of a great 
and gifted woman crowned her radiant girl- 
hood. Taken as a young girl to Florence, 
where she studied music undei; Garcia ; where 
the poet Landor taught her Latin, and himself 
wrote verses to her ; where she studied the 
languages, and met and loved Mrs. Browning, 
who often kept the gifted girl for days as her 
guest at Casa Guidi, — here in Florence she 
found her native air of art and inspiration. It 
was the atmosphere to which she was born, and 
it was a part of the divine destiny of her noble 
life that in her beautiful youth she should 
have come under these marvellous influences. 
It was here she met George Eliot, who was 
strongly attracted by the brilliant girl, and who 
gave her wise counsel and strong stimulus. 

Her rich gifts and these felicitous circum- 
stances conspired to allow her to win early 
fame in the world of letters ; and while I was 
still a child, treading the quiet ways of a coun- 



What Lacks the Summer? 19 

try home, her literary work touched the spring 
of enthusiasm, and I learned to watch for it 
and love it until it became the central interest 
in my life. My day-dreams were of her, 
this radiant figure out in an unknown and 
enchanted world, — Florence and Rome and 
Paris ; and at night I would lie awake, wish- 
ing that by some magic her picture would 
flash upon me through the darkness. The 
years sped on, and she dominated my girlhood. 
To my girlish fancy, as later to the perception 
of my womanhood, she seemed to impersonate 
the genius of nobleness. 

It must have been a dozen years that I thus 
thought of her and dreamed of her afar, before 
the inscrutable ways of destiny at last brought 
me within the horizon of her life ; and from 
the hour of our first meeting the hope to so 
live as to grow less and less unworthy to be 
her friend became to me the dominant note 
in life. Nor was it a narrow, human limita- 
tion. For I could not but recognize — though 
far too feebly and too crudely — how great 
was the quality of her spirit. 



20 After Her Death. 

" 'T is human fortune's happiest height to be 
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole : 
Second, in order of felicity, 
I hold it, to have walked with such a soul." 

And so, long before we met in the visible 
world, the spiritual link was forged which 
finally drew me to her on earth, and which, 
let me reverently trust, will ere long bring me 
again to that dear presence by which all my 
days and dreams are still companioned. The 
entire story of our friendship is simply a story 
of spiritual destiny. I always saw her, not 
in the mere visible and tangible setting and 
scenery of the moment, but in what I may 
perhaps venture to term the ethereal atmos- 
phere, — in a world partly denoted in these 
lines of a little Impromptu that I once wrote 
to her, though it was afterward published 
under a veiled title. The lines ran : — 

I do not find you in the outer life. 

Always I see you in those gardens fair 

With starry jasmine shining in your hair, 

Apart from noise and fret of daily life 

With which the day and daylight world are rife. 

Always I see you, Love, in regions where 

Immortal Landor trod, great spirits came, 



What Lacks the Summer? 21 

"Whose fire of genius set your own aflame, 
Your girlish voice inspiring loud acclaim. 
Always I see you in those gardens where 
Music and fragrance linger on the air ; 
W x here she u who sang of Italy " still lies 
Beneath the glory of the starlit skies, 
Whose beauty held her in a glad surprise. 
Flower of all Cities ! City of all Flowers ! 
'T is there you linger in the charmed hours ; 
With jasmine in your hair I see you stand 
Fair in the grace of that Enchanted Land. 

And so it was that our friendship always 
seemed to me as made for heaven rather than 
for earth ; and so it is that since she has en- 
tered into the invisible world it has assumed 
a power and a proportion and an unmistakable 
and marvellous influence over events which 
must be my explanation of the little record 
of this story. For the time has now come, in 
the evolution of social progress, when all that 
tends to throw any light upon the real rela- 
tions between the Seen and the Unseen is of 
common interest to us all, and in mutual com- 
parison of experiences we may hope to evolve 
actual knowledge of the conditions of the life 
just beyond the present. 



FROM INMOST DREAMLAND. 

Thy voice from inmost dreamland calls ; 

The wastes of sleep thou makest fair ; 
Bright o'er the ridge of darkness falls 

The cataract of thy hair. 

The morn renews its golden birth ; 

Thou with the vanquished night dost fade, 
And leav'st the ponderable earth 

Less real than thy shade. 

William Watson. 




FROM INMOST DREAMLAND. 

11 Less yearning for the friendship fled 
Than some strong bond which is to be." 

JS I have said, I had long had a girl's 
dreams of her as an enchanting 
figure out in a gay, glad world 
yet unrevealed to me. It was as 
vague and unreal as the ethereal world can 
seem to any one here amid the things of sense. 
When, at last, I came within the charmed cir- 
cle of her life, she became to me the magnetic 
centre. So that when, on that June day in 
Paris, as the sunny radiance of the morning 
flooded the Champs Elys^es with balm and 
bloom and radiant energy, I learned from a 
cablegram that she had already been for more 
than two weeks in the life beyond ; that her 
death had occurred the very day that I landed 
at Liverpool and had been given that thrilling 



26 After Her Death. 

vision of my last night on the steamer ; when 
I realized that her death occurred on that far 
away island in the Pacific where there is no 
cable communication, and that it had taken 
the two weeks for the tidings to reach the 
United States, — in that first moment of blind, 
bewildering agony there was little of conscious 
reflection or thought. The morning was as fair 
as a dream of Paradise. The song of birds came 
from the leafy foliage in the Champs Elys^es. 
The crystal play of the fountains in the Place 
de la Concorde gleamed in a thousand iri- 
descent hues in the golden sunshine. The 
little garden into which I wandered was fra- 
grant with blossoms. 
And she had gone ! 

u Oh, alone, alone, — 
Not troubling any in heaven, or any on earth, — 
I stood there in the garden and looked up 
The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out 
On such June mornings.'' 

Reading time backward, like the Chaldeans, 
many things began to grow clear. The voice 
and the vision that thrilled me like a strong 



From Inmost Dreamland. 27 

current of electricity, in that last night on the 
" Pavonia," were now explained. It was she 
whom I had seen as she entered the unknown 
world ; it was her voice that I had heard in 
that tone of mingled amazement, incredulity, 
and exaltation. There was to me a solemn im- 
pressiveness in this which seemed, in that mo- 
ment of supremest pain, to say, " Be still, and 
know that I am God/' 

On this day there began for me a summer 
of either very curious coincidences, or of con- 
vincing spiritual realities in daily experience. 

The unaccountable sadness and desolation 
that had been over me was coincident with the 
date of her death. There could be no reason- 
able doubt that my own subliminal self had 
received from her the tidings of her passing 
to the life beyond, and that while the lower 
consciousness did not record any definite 
message, it did receive the forcible impression 
of a great loss, a great sadness. Such an ex- 
perience is not a matter of merely personal or 
private interest. There is nothing of more 
immediate concern to all humanity at the 



28 After Her Death. 

present time than the worth or worthlessness 
of psychic experiences. 

It was not, I reflected, any more mysterious 
that my spirit and hers should have met as 
she left the mortal body than that, as a child, 
my spirit should have been so attracted by 
her : and that through all my girlhood, in the 
years before we ever met, she should yet have 
dominated my life. There was no human 
means of learning anything that day beyond 
the mere fact flashed under the sea by the 
cablegram. So I went alone to my room. I 
called on her to come. " I, too," I said, " am 
a spirit, though still dwelling in the physical 
world. Come to me ; come and tell me 
what this means ! " I implored her. In a few 
moments that same mysterious thrill, which I 
can only describe as like contact with an elec- 
tric current, ran through me. I seemed to 
perceive that she came and stood by me, one 
hand resting lightly on my shoulder. I saw 
nothing visible ; I felt nothing tangible ; I 
heard nothing audible; and still, in some 
way, I seemed to actually know that she 



\ 



From Inmost Dreamland. 29 

stood by me, — that her hand was on me, and 
that she answered in these words : " It was 
the only possible solution." Each word fell 
upon my mind distinctly, yet far apart, and as 
if it were a great effort to impress each one. 
Though there was no audible sound, yet no 
spoken words were ever more distinct. There 
seemed to me no room to doubt that this 
was telepathic communion, and already the 
truth of telepathy is as fully established by 
science as that of telegraphy. Telepathy is 
the language of the spirit ; audible speech is 
the language of physical organs. 

The unseen world began to grow very real 
to me. Often, indeed, had I heard her speak 
of these mysteries, and her interest in psychical 
research was strong. " I look to see science 
prove Immortality," she once remarked, and the 
words are full of that prophetic power with 
which her remarkable force of insight always 
invested her. That science must prove im- 
mortality is the message of to-day. For there 
is a distinct and recognizable approach of the 
two worlds to each other, — the seen and 



30 After Her Death. 

the unseen. Each is flashing its signals, and 
the failure or the delay in a more universal 
recognition of these on our part is simply in 
not realizing that this communion must be at- 
tained through our own higher spiritual life, 
and not demanded or expected as mere phe- 
nomena. We have demanded that the unseen 
shall manifest themselves to us, — visibly, 
audibly, to our material senses. But while 
there is undoubtedly much of this phenom- 
ena, it is, at best, only begging the question. 
The only true, permanent, and satisfactory 
way to live in companionship and in commu- 
nion with those who have passed through the 
experience of death is to live in the spirit, — to 
live, now and here, every day and every hour, 
the spiritual life. And what is this life ? It 
is love, joy, peace. It is infinite and unfailing 
good- will ; it is abounding love ; it is meek- 
ness, and patience, and belief ; it is energy in 
all endeavor ; it is in the constant desire and 
effort to so live that, in the words of Phillips 
Brooks, "if every man lived as you do, this 
earth would be heaven." The problem of 



From Inmost Dreamland. 31 

communion with those who have passed into 
the unseen lies with us rather than with 
them ; it lies in our own purification and 
exaltation of life ; for this alone offers the 
atmosphere — the aura — into which the 
higher spirits can enter. 

The law of evolution is not limited to ac- 
tion on the physical. world alone. It does not 
cease to operate with the attainment of physi- 
cal perfection. For man is primarily a spirit- 
ual being, and only incidentally and transiently 
an inhabitant of the physical world. That is 
a mere phase, rudimental and experimental in 
its nature. His physical body is an instru- 
ment, by means of which, for a time, he is 
enabled to relate himself to the physical world. 
Here he does not so much live as begin to 
learn how to live. 

The tragedy of life would be in its lost op- 
portunities, were it not that a lost opportunity, 
when fully recognized too late for its pursuance 
here, is there held to await him who shall be 
worthy of it on the plane of life just beyond. 
The friendships that seem to have missed 



32 After Her Death. 

their possible perfection here, to have failed in 
what each at heart desired to realize, await 
another experience to which each shall come 
with finer preparation. 

11 7 T is not within the force of fate 
The fate -conjoined to separate." 

Whether one shall again take up his inter- 
course with the friend who has passed before 
him into the unseen, depends on the daily life 
he lives now and here. The meeting beyond 
is in no sense a matter of arbitrary and mys- 
terious destiny. It depends solely upon the 
sustaining and the growth of mutual under- 
standing between the two lives, — the one in 
the seen, the other in the unseen. The future 
meeting is a matter of condition, of sympathy. 
It is as crude to imagine that all who die 
necessarily meet, as to suppose that all Ameri- 
cans who go to London or Paris inevitably 
meet there and become acquainted. Whether 
they do or not depends solely on the condi- 
tions that produce, or fail to produce, the 
attractions that draw people together. 



From Inmost Dreamland, 33 

Man being primarily a spiritual being, his 
own real progress or real success in life is as 
he so realizes himself. The life after death is 
fast coming to be no longer to us a specula- 
tion or a superstition, but a very real fact 
with which to deal, — a phase of the near fu- 
ture for which to daily prepare. And the 
only true preparation for the life after death 
is to live nobly the life before death. 

There seems to me no doubt that her pro- 
phetic words to the effect that science will 
yet prove Immortality are almost on the eve 
of fulfilment. 

Psychic science is conquering new terri- 
tory ; discerning more and more of truth con- 
stantly. It is discovering that the life just 
beyond this is not so great a change from this 
as we have fancied; that there is no such 
thing as a " disembodied " spirit. Death is 
simply the separation of the finer ethereal 
body from the outer and coarser one. The 
new form is like the old, save that it is subtle, 
magnetic, and it is far more the direct reflec- 
tion of the spiritual nature. The unseen 



34 After Her Death. 

world in which it now begins another life is 
as real, — far more real, indeed, — than this, 
and is formed of far more potent forces. This 
Avorld exists all about us in space. To be- 
come cognizant of it depends on condition 
alone. To the blind the world we live in is 
unseen, because the blind man has not the 
organ that corresponds with his environment ; 
when the spiritual world about us is undis- 
covered, it is because we have not yet devel- 
oped those latent faculties which would enable 
us to perceive it. The spiritual life is 

11 built of furtherance and pursuing : 
Not of spent deeds, but of doing." 

As we live the life of the spirit, we are 
companioned by the friends in the unseen, in 
the simple and natural way that attends all 
true relations of mutual sympathy. 



PAST THE MORNING STAR. 

I look to see science prove Immortality. 

Kate Field. 

" Such sweet communion had been ours 
I prayed that it might never end. 
My prayer is more than answered ; now, 
I have an angel for my friend. 77 




PAST THE MORNING STAR. 

u Past midnight, — past the morning star." 

[T was the only possible solution ! " 
These words remained with me. 
There was in them a significance 
that cannot be here translated, 
but I felt it and perceived its truth. Failing 
health and other attendant circumstances made 
it imperative that she should be released from 
the conditions here and permitted to enter 
new ones. Yet, a few days later, when I had 
searched the London papers for any added 
tidings and failed to find them, hope revived, 
and the possibility asserted itself that the 
cablegram had been some dreadful mistake. 
In a way I knew this was not true, and still, as 
a little escape from the intolerable pain, I al- 
most sought to deceive myself into a moment's 
respite. I was standing before the mirror 



38 After Her Death. 

dressing for dinner, in a half-blind relief at 
the words of a friend who, thinking only of 
how to comfort me a little, had just asserted 
her strong belief that the news must have 
been a mistake and that mistakes did some- 
times occur in cablegrams, — I was half in 
hope and half in despair trying to reinforce 
myself on this meagre possibility, — when again 
I was suddenly conscious of her presence: 
she stood before me and though, as before, I 
saw nothing visible, yet I was as conscious of 
her form, of the expression of her countenance, 
even of her dress, as I could have been of any 
friend who had come in. And again distinctly 
her words, though not audible, fell on my 
inner sense. 

" It is true," ran the words, calling me by 
name ; " it is true, and you must believe it." 
Then I knew, though I cannot explain how or 
why, that the reference was to her death ; she 
had seen how I was trying, for the moment, to 
delude myself with a false hope, and with that 
passion for truth at any cost, and however 
unpalatable, that always pre-eminently charac- 



Past the Morning Star. 39 

terized her, she had been enabled to ap- 
proach me nearly enough to tell me this. 
The impressiveness of the presence which I 
perceived, which I felt with a vividness and 
a force never experienced in any meeting 
here, is beyond the power of words to de- 
scribe. As I went down and joined my friends 
at dinner, Madame, my hostess, again ex- 
claimed, " I do believe you will find that cable 
to be a mistake." " No, Madame," I replied ; 
" it was not a mistake ; it is true." 

" But how do you know ? " she rejoined in 
surprise ; " I thought you were almost con- 
vinced, since you did not find it in the London 
papers, that it was not true.' 1 

How did I know, indeed ? Ah, I could not 
tell her how ; yet I did know as well as I 
do at the moment of writing this, that my 
hope was an idle one, and that I must cease 
all weak lament and lift my thought to 
another state of existence. 

Tiie next day I again sat alone in my room 
and called upon her to come. I was soon 
conscious of this impressive though all unseen 



40 After Her Death. 

presence. " Tell me/' I implored, "tell me how 
we shall bridge over this gulf of silence between 
the Seen and the Unseen ? What can we do, 
you and I, to bridge over this silence between 
the two planes of life ? We stand here, 
spirit to spirit, for I, too, though still in the 
physical world, am potentially a spiritual being 
as well as you. How can you still convey to 
one the knowledge of your experiences ? " 

"It rests with you rather than with me," 
was the reply. No words were audible ; no 
form was visible ; but this sentence sank upon 
my mind with the absolute and unmistakable 
reality that would attend any reply made to a 
very serious question. 

This time the words were not quite so far 
apart, and it seemed easier for her to speak 
and for me to receive them than before. " It 
rests with you rather than with me ! " The 
words opened to me a new vista. The current 
" spiritualism " of the world has always been 
calling on those in the unseen life to manifest 
themselves ; to " rap/' to " materialize," — this 
and that. Without going into this subject at 



Past the Morning Star. 41 

all, it may probably be received by us all as 
approximate truth that a proportion of all 
these recorded and related manifestations are 
true ; a proportion fraudulent, including both 
intentional and unintentional deception. But 
in any case the onus has been thrown upon 
the unseen to make themselves known to us, 
rather than upon ourselves to so develop our 
spiritual nature as to come into easy and nat- 
ural communication with them. 

In that other world which Kant well calls 
not another place, but another view, are 
the hosts of the unseen ; their lives press 
closely to ours, but are made up of a range of 
experiences far more extended, more vivid, 
more significant, than our own. How shall 
we comprehend these? How shall we under- 
stand what they desire to tell us ? 

It rests ivith us rather than with them. 

Communion with this world is no more 
the mere experience of an hour's seance 
with a " medium " than is the mere occasional 
sending of a telegram the measure of our life. 
As potential spiritual beings, it is our privilege 




42 After Her Death. 

to live the life of the spirit, — the higher life 
of intellectual work, of affection, of generosity, 
of love. That quality of life is spiritual life. 
That quality of life renders the inter-commu- 
nion possible. 

The evolutionary progress of the race has 
now attained a degree that renders inter- 
communion between the two worlds the next 
step. It is as natural, as subject to the or- 
derly workings of Law, as is the development 
of electricity. This opening of inter-commu- 
nion — not as an occasional phenomenon, but 
as the natural daily experience — is now as 
essential to the higher social progress as was 
the laying of the Atlantic cable. Is it " vision- 
ary " to talk of it ? Columbus was a visionary. 
Cyrus Field was a visionary. " Visions," says 
George Eliot, " are the creators and feeders 
of mankind." 

The nature, the resources, the experiences 
common to the life just beyond, are, we may be 
assured, soon to be revealed to us. 

" What is so universal as death must be a 
benefit," wrote the poet Schiller ; and to any 



Past the Morning Star. 43 

of us who have paused before the closed por- 
tal beyond which our nearest and dearest 
have vanished, these words must recur as sig- 
nificant. There is a signal comfort in realiz- 
ing the universality of the experience. Even 
at the worst and in the most despairing view, 
it is only a question of time. It is not as if 
death occurred to some and not to others. It 
is the one inevitable and absolute certainty for 
every human being, and in this fact alone is 
untold consolation. 

" For dying has grown dear 
Now you are dead, who turned all things to grace." 

Even the most despairing and sceptical pessi- 
mist must needs admit this proposition : that 
if immortality and reunion beyond the grave 
is true, it is, at worst, only a question of 
time. The event is assured. If immortality is 
not true, and if there is no reunion beyond, — 
if this life here is all, — then a few years more 
or less of happiness matter little, in the long 
run. The end is inevitable ; and whether 
it come sooner or later is not of lasting 
significance. 



44 After Her Death. 

For myself, while I had always believed 
entirely, though in a rather serenely light- 
hearted way, in the reunion beyond, and in 
more or less communion between those in the 
two worlds all the time : yet when the ques- 
tion suddenly became to me, by her death, 
one of the most absolute and predominant 
importance, then, instead of accepting readily 
the possibility of communion with her, I be- 
came questioning and critical of every expe- 
rience. In just the degree to which it was to 
me a matter of supreme moment, — one that 
transcended every other wish and hope and 
demand of life, — to just that degree did I 
grow more and more critical in scrutiny of the 
experiences which I record in this story of a 
summer. It is, indeed, a story so entirely of 
the inner life, and of experiences the most 
sacred and private, that only the conviction 
that the occurrences attest the working of a 
law as yet unformulated constrains this rec- 
ord. It is more and more borne in upon my 
mind that, in the order of divine Providence, 
the time is approaching for the beginning of 



Past the Morning Star. 45 

direct and authentic inter-communion between 
the two worlds of the seen and the unseen. 
Always have there been partial glimpses, occa- 
sional intimations, the momentary lifting of the 
curtain. The poets have always had visions 
of " angels that come and go," and have 
transcribed them, without, perhaps, the con- 
viction of their absolute and simple and lit- 
eral reality. They have been vague, because 
the mind of the one receiving them was in 
the race bondage to the prevailing belief that 
these things are abnormal, and are rather, 
even at best, the shadow of truth than truth 
itself. Theology, rather than intuition, has 
dominated mankind. The Bible is one con- 
tinuous record of what are really and simply 
spiritual experiences, occurring between the in- 
habitants of the seen and the unseen worlds. 
With the life of Jesus these assumed a still 
higher character ; and his life, his death, his 
subsequent appearances in the spiritual body, 
offered an impressive object lesson of the des- 
tiny of the soul. He whose life was so far 
exalted above that of any other also was ena- 



46 After Her Death., 

bled to realize the spiritualization of his visi- 
ble body, so that, instead of his spiritual form 
escaping from its outer sheath, as is the case 
in the usual process of death, his spiritual 
power was sufficient to transmute the physi- 
cal body into the spiritual one, and thus there 
was no body left in the sepulchre. Psychic 
science has now arrived at this truth, which 
explains the fact that has puzzled and per- 
plexed preceding ages, — that the sepulchre 
was vacant when the stone was rolled away. 
Psychic science advances and makes its dis- 
coveries in the same accurate and authentic 
manner that science on any other plane makes. 
That the earth is round and revolves ; that 
the law of gravitation obtains; that action 
and reaction are equal ; that the stars and 
that solar systems have their appointed courses, 
— all these are among the sublime truths that 
science has discovered. In an age that can 
photograph thought; that can weigh the 
emotions ; that can send a message by a 
sunbeam instead of a wire ; that can tele- 
graph by the clouds, — in such an age it is not 



Past the Morning Star, 47 

possible that absolute ignorance shall prevail 
as to the nature and the general characteris- 
tics of the life just beyond this, to which go, 
every day, those nearest and dearest to us ; to 
which we are inevitably destined. The time 
has arrived when direct and authentic com- 
munication must begin. 

" Shall I hold on with both hands to every 
paltry possession ? " said Emerson. " All I 
have seen teaches me to trust the Creator 
for all I have not seen." 

Communication w r ith those who have gone 
into the unseen by means of visible forces, as 
rapping, table-lifting, and all kinds of physical 
phenomena, is sometimes genuine, but is, at 
the best, clumsy and crude. It is calculated 
to only impress the senses, and deals only with 
the material. As man advances in spirituality 
of life, he develops those faculties which have 
a correspondence to the faculties of spiritual 
beings. The difference is as it would be in 
communication here, if we resorted to rapping 
and table-tapping and signs and signals instead 
of language. Now, if mankind could grasp the 



48 After Her Death. 

law of telepathy and thus learn the language of 
spiritual life, could not the awful desolation of 
death, resulting from the unbroken silence, be 
redeemed to a sense of sacred joy? Is not 
this, then, the next step in evolution ? Is it 
not the achievement of the near future, — to 
so develop spirituality of life and the use of 
spiritual faculties that communion between 
those in this world will take on those higher 
instantaneous conditions of spirit to spirit, and 
that communion may be established between 
the seen and the unseen ? 

The more conscious the communion with her 
became, the more I seemed to be taught that 
the power of telepathy is that by means of 
which the identity of spiritual life in both the 
seen and in the unseen shall be established. It 
is the language of the spirit. Undoubtedly 
the means of communication between those 
who have passed through death, and who are 
in the life beyond, it is no less the higher 
means of their communication with us here, 
and the higher means of communication, also, 
between those who are still in the physical 



Past the Morning Star. 49 

life. It is a means possible only to a certain 
degree of spiritual development, united with 
intelligent recognition. The discovery of tel- 
epathy — the most swift, subtle, and potent 
force in existence — is one whose results are 
incalculable. For with our rational recogni- 
tion these results will begin to take their due 
place in life and fall into the divine order of 
the conduct of affairs. Telepathy will inevit- 
ably become a practical working factor in life, 
as universally recognized as telegraphy and as 
definitely controlled by its own law 7 s. When 
it is once understood that communication be- 
tween two persons in the unseen world, or 
two persons in this world,'or between one who 
is here and one who is there, is substantially 
the same kind of communication, then the 
separation of death will not separate, and the 
absolute and vivid perception of the divine 
order of the universe will begin. For the sake 
of clearness, let us suppose the case of four 
friends, all of whom are known to each other ; 
two of whom have died and are in the unseen 
world, and the other two of whom are here. 
4 



50 After Her Death. 

A and B, we will say, are in the unseen 
world; C and D are in the physical world. 
Now if A and B carry on their intercourse 
together by telepathy ; if C and D can also, 
even while in this world, communicate by 
the same law ; and if A and B both commu- 
nicate to C and D by this swift and subtle 
mental telegraphy of thought, — then it is 
obvious that ail four are, practically, spiritual 
beings, living in a spiritual world, and in 
touch with spiritual forces. It is obvious that 
when C and D shall emerge, so to speak, from 
their physical bodies, that they will be to some 
degree prepared for the change to the new life 
and the new conditions. It is also obvious 
that if the spiritual nature while here can be 
so developed as to be able to intelligently use 
its higher faculties, — those which are its 
working forces for the life to come, — it is a 
valuable achievement. Every advance in 
power reacts upon the environment. The 
world is one thing to the savage, another to 
the civilized man. The higher the civiliza- 
tion, the larger are the resources of life. 



Past the Morning Star. 51 

" The universe belongs to him who loves, who 
wills, who prays/' says Balzac ; " but he must 
love, he must will, he must pray." To love, 
to will, to pray, is to come into conscious real- 
ization of the higher powers. 

There has often been quoted, with the em- 
phasis of applause, the remark of some one 
who proposed to take " one world at a time." 
But where is the line to be drawn ? Man has 
his twofold nature, — the physical and the 
spiritual. The moment that he reads, thinks, 
transacts business, enters into social relations, 
he is acting, by necessity, the part of an inhab- 
itant of the spiritual world. Thought, love, 
sympathy, intelligence, — those all belong to 
his spiritual nature. If he is to take one 
world only, implying the world of the visible 
and the tangible, then he must merely eat, 
drink, and sleep. To think, to invent, to cre- 
ate, to conduct great enterprises, to hold so- 
cial relations, — all that is of the other world, 
which he who consistently takes " one world 
at a time " must bar out from his life. The 
phrase is easily reduced to an absurdity. 



52 After Her Death. 

There are very few human beings who live 
exclusively in the " one world." The one who 
did so live would be a monstrosity, for he 
would have to be devoid of mental power 
and of social sympathies* 

To live the higher life is a method com- 
mended by all. What is that higher life but 
to live the life of the spirit, — which is joy, 
peace, and love ? To achieve the life of the 
spirit is to develop within ourselves those 
faculties which are in easy and natural com- 
munication with the faculties of those in the 
unseen. It is to come into spiritual corre- 
spondence with them. 



IN TWO WORLDS. 

Two worlds hast thou to dwell in, Sweet, — 

The virginal, untroubled sky, 
And this vext region at my feet. 

Alas, but one have I ! 

To all my songs there clings the shade, 
The dulling shade of mundane care; 

They amid mortal mists are made ; 
Thine, in immortal air. 

William Watson. 




m TWO WORLDS. 

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that 
stare us in the face until the hour arrives when the 
mind is ripened. # Then we behold them, and the time 
when we saw them not is like a dream. 

Emerson. 

|HE law of auto-suggestion accounts 
for a large proportion of the expe- 
riences which those unfamiliar with 
the data of psychic science as- 
cribe to the force of another mind; but it 
could not, it seemed to me, account for these 
occasional occurrences when the sudden com- 
ing of my friend in the unseen took on the 
same reality that would invest the arrival of 
any guest or caller. In fact, this is but a 
feeble expression to describe those vivid ex- 
periences which often reminded me of Emer- 
son's words when he says : — 



56 After Her Death. 

" In our definitions we grope after the spirit- 
ual by describing it as invisible. The true 
meaning of spiritual is re 

This was what they seemed, — real experi- 
ences in contrast with which the meeting and 
mingling with people in this life were vague. 
It is true that the thought of her was never, 
so to speak, absent from my mind. Nor did 
I even for an instant wish to forget, even 
though remembrance was pain unspeakable. 
Ah! — 

" The rose's scent is bitterness 
To him that loved the rose." 

And always with me, whatever the scenes 
of outward beauty, of historic grandeur, of 
poetic association, was that constant sense of 
desolation. Without her it was literally true 
for me that 

"the world's great space 
Held nothing hnt an empty place." 

This perpetual consciousness of heV, how- 
ever, did not produce any perpetual conscious- 
ness of her presence. When that recognition 
came it was as distinct as that of the entrance 



In Two Worlds. 57 

of any visitor, besides being far more vivid and 
impressive. Scrutinizing these mental condi- 
tions the conviction grew that if her presence 
was merely a matter of imagination on my part, 
I should imagine it more frequently, and for 
longer periods of time. But it seemed to be a 
distinct event outside myself when I perceived 
her presence, and as if it were by some law 
as natural as that which governs our meetings 
in this world. It seemed, too, that she was 
learning how to reach me, as my spirit w^as 
endeavoring to learn how to recognize her, 
and that on both sides this was a spiritual 
experiment in which we were both gaining 
increased facility. 

It was on the morning of the nineteenth 
day after she had gone to the other world 
that I awakened and gazed for an instant in 
sheer bewilderment at the space where an in- 
stant before I had seen her. The sceptic will 
say this was a dream ; but as it links itself 
with so many other experiences later on that 
proved themselves outside those of this life, I 
am persuaded that the state I had been in 



58 After Her Death. 

was merely a bodily sleep, while the spirit was 
actively conscious. At all events, I seemed 
to have just seen and talked with her. It 
was as if we had suddenly met after a long 
absence, and I was narrating to her how I 
had endeavored by means of maps and data 
to follow her in her last journeys when here. 
She looked as I had never seen her, yet per- 
fectly natural, if the two can be reconciled. 
It was she in her radiant youth, the girl 
I had never seen rather than the woman I had 
known, yet the question of identity, or even 
of any strangeness, did not occur to me. In 
reply to my remark about following her jour- 
neys, — which applied, indeed, to the entire 
fifteen years of our friendship during which 
she had travelled extensively and I had been 
so in touch with her plans that almost any 
day, if not hour, I could have reached her 
by telegram, — in reply she said, with an in- 
effable smile, " Ah, but there was one journey 
on which you could not follow me." It was 
at this moment that I came to consciousness ; 
and should any caller in my room suddenly 



In Two Worlds. 59 

vanish from the chair in which he sat, I could 
not be more amazed than I was for an instant 
to see the vacant place where I had just seen 
her. 

Is it not true that the " subconscious " self 
is an infelicitous name for the higher, the real 
self, whose powers are far in advance of those 
manifested on this or the visible plane ? This 
subconscious (or higher) self is to the ordinary 
self as the man who can hear, see, speak, touch, 
and walk is to the one who is deaf, blind, 
dumb, and paralyzed. Clairvoyance, clairau- 
dience, the power to control things far beyond 
our actual touch and presence, are poten- 
tial faculties of every human being. Jesus 
plainly said that all He had done we should 
do ; and not only this, but " greater things." 
The key to all true life is to accept His as- 
sertions in the simple, direct way in which 
they are given. The potential higher being, 
with all its marvellous powers, is within each 
human being. To realize this divinity in 
every-day living is the desired end. By virtue 
of this potential higher self we have commu- 



GO After Her Death. 

nion with those beyond death. To just the 
extent that we realize on this plane of mani- 
festation that higher spiritual (or subcon- 
scious) self, to that extent do we dwell, now 
and here, in the spiritual world, in commu- 
nion with its inhabitants. 

It was, I am persuaded, my own " subcon- 
scious," or subliminal self which, from some 
cause of unusual harmony at that time, was 
able to distinctly perceive and recognize the 
ethereal form of my friend. The first three im- 
pressions of her presence had been of messages 
heard by the inner sense. In this fourth one 
was the inner sense of sight added to hearing. 
The sensation it left with me is indescribable 
in its exhilaration and radiant energy. 

It is now nearly fifty years since the sound of 
" the Rochester knockings " was heard round 
the world. From that time a vast mass of 
phenomena has accumulated that has been 
studied, denied, derided, accepted, variously. 
It has enlisted learned investigation. It has 
baffled investigation. It has been relegated 
to the realm of the inconsequential, and has 



In Two Worlds. 61 

incited the frequent remark that it is all too 
crude and too idle to have any high origin or 
convey any hint of value. This sweeping gener- 
alization would be not without truth if all this 
were an end. But it was not in the least an 
end, but a means. It was simply the method 
employed to arrest the general attention. The 
finer and higher method of telepathy might 
reach and impress the brain of an Emerson, 
but it couM not reach and impress the general 
public. That had to be done by the appeal 
to the physical senses, — to the sight, the 
hearing, and the touch. To communicate by 
rapping and the alphabet may seem very 
puerile, but what beginning could be made ? 
How was this gulf of silence between the two 
worlds to be bridged over ? What signals 
could be flashed across ? All that stage has 
been merely preparatory. The real illumina- 
tion is yet to come. 

But the achievement is to be on our side, 
by lifting ourselves to the spiritual life ; by 
so overcoming the lower, the selfish nature 
that we may perpetually live the life of the 



62 After Her Death. 

spirit. The devotee who embraces the ascetic 
life seizes a fragment of the truth, — that of 
overcoming the lower physical nature. But 
physical qualities held in due support of the 
powers of the spirit are not low. For in- 
stance, to dine for the mere pleasure of appe- 
tite is a propensity to be overcome ; but to 
dine for the reinforcement of bodily energies, 
that they may well sustain that instrument 
through which the spirit works, is a factor in 
the higher life. It is a life that is lived by 
considering the body as an instrument, — as 
the temple of the indwelling spirit, — to be 
kept in health and in harmony, in support of 
the spiritual purposes of accomplishment, of 
aspiration, of the fulfilment of duties, the ra- 
diation of noble and true influence. So living, 
spirit will respond to spirit, both from the 
Seen and the Unseen. 

Nor, when this matter is looked at fairly, 
can it seem irreverent or idle to endeavor to 
trace the law of social relation which persists 
beyond death. Just why it should be wrong 
or unwise ta establish, if possible, clearly 



In Two Worlds. 63 

recognized and intelligent communion with 
those who have passed into the higher state 
is not quite plain. Might it not, with equal 
force, have been said, before the Atlantic 
cable was laid, that it would be wrong to 
attempt instantaneous communication between 
the two continents, — on the ground that it 
was unnatural ? If it is right to continue 
communication with a friend on the other side 
of the earth, how can it be wrong to continue 
communication with him on the other side of 
death ? 

We are in the dawning of an age of higher 
forces. The more active, the more potent, the 
more vivid world is as the plane just beyond 
this. There is the sphere of far wider and 
more important activities, and it is of these 
that we catch certain reflections and sugges- 
tions, as in the great inventions here which 
are projected from that plane to this. There 
is the centre of intense and far-reaching activi- 
ties ; there is, indeed, the real life, in the sense 
of deeper realities than those of the present 
stage. Now, the capacity to receive impres- 



64 After Her Death. 

sions is of itself a valuable quality. As hu- 
manity advances, this capacity becomes more 
keen, and man catches hints and receives inti- 
mations of a finer and far more extended 
order. The result of these is seen in the 
world at the present time, in the growing 
knowledge of science, the increasing inven- 
tions, the general advance to a larger scale of 
living. This advance will increase in an accel- 
erated ratio, until this world shall be fairly 
transformed to a higher plane. But the trans- 
formation will not be a supernatural, but 
a purely natural one. Some of these transfor- 
mations have already been entered upon. It 
is difficult to imagine the social state when 
there was no telegraphic communication, no 
steam-engine, no fast steamers. Yet within 
the memory of men still living was the time 
when it required a month to go to Europe; 
when only the stagecoach went to the Pacific 
Coast, and when telegraphic communication 
did not exist. Even electricity; which is un- 
doubtedly the force in use on the plane of life 
beyond this, is so extending the facilities of 



In Tico Worlds. 65 

life on earth as to, practically, enlarge all the 
faculties of the mind and increase the use of 
the senses. If by telephone one may speak to 
a friend one thousand miles away, that is prac- 
tically working the miracle of his voice being 
heard at the distance of one thousand miles. 

Space is being annihilated by steam and by 
electricity. The isolation of life is also being 
rapidly transformed into close social contact 
by the new conditions. 

The curiously misleading phraseology of 
death as " going into the dark/' and as " the 
terror of the unknown," and "the land of 
shadows" will soon be obsolete. Human 
will recognize the higher truth. 



DISTANT GATES OF EDEN. 

" The connection between electricity and psychic 
force is a subject of singular interest; and the ten- 
dency of facts already known goes far to prove that 
they are connected. . . . 

" Each force in nature is the servant of the next 
above it Mechanics lends itself to chemistry ; chem- 
istry to electricity ; electricity to psychic force. And 
these are but the outer gates to the vital forces en- 
trusted to a higher range of spiritual existence." 

u Who, rowing hard against the stream, 
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam." 




DISTANT GATES OF EDEN. 

In our definitions we grope after the spiritual by 
describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spirit- 
ual is real — Emerson. 

OMMUNICATION is the supreme 
test of civilization. The higher 
its degree, the finer its quality, the 
more easy and swift are the meth- 
ods of communication. Take the savage, the 
barbarous state ; how abject and dull are the 
methods of social intercourse ! Conversation, 
in the sense of the higher development of life, 
is unknown. Whatever intercourse there is, is 
restricted to the crudest and most meagre 
kind, and relates only to the barest physical 
necessities. As the scale of life ascends, the 
range of communication increases, and its sub- 
jects multiply. The man of the higher culture 
has a thousand subjects on which to converse, 



70 After Her Death. 

a multitude of ideas to impart; that are totally 
unknown to a lower degree of development.; 
Then, as we advance in the scrutiny of civi- 
lized life, we see the small town with its one 
weekly paper, the larger one with its dafe 
the great city with its dozens of semi-Oaily 
papers, — all eagerly seized as methods of 
intercommunication in human society, £& 
civilization advances, the barriers of all isola- 
tion break down. Each nation is aware' of 
the leading events transpiring in other na- 
tions; conversation, letters, the daily press, 
the telegraph, the cable, the telephone, — all 
these are the expressions of the highest devel- 
opment of civilization. Easy and rapid transit 
also keeps pace with these. So much must be 
conceded as an existing and evident truth. 

Now, the next step in the higher develop- 
ment of life is to establish communication w r ith 
the life just beyond this. If there is any ad- 
vantage in direct and swift communication 
with other nations, how much greater may be 
that of direct and intelligent communication 
with the higher plane of life ! If it is desir- 



Distant Gates of Eden. 71 

able to establish communication with the in- 
habitants of Mars, how much more so with 
that vast multitude of our own friends, our 
own fellow-beings, who have, by means of the 
process of death, attained a state of existence 
that is still a mystery to us, as regards its con- 
ditions, its methods, its resources. Here is a 
vast world of the most vivid and important 
activities, — a world whose life is infinitely 
more active, more significant than that of our 
own, — and we go on for centuries regarding 
it as a misfortune to go there, and as a place 
which we call the land of shadows, of dark- 
ness, of phantoms ! More important than the 
mission of Columbus to discover this new 
continent ; more important than the mission 
of Cyrus Field to lay the cable, — is the mis- 
sion to establish a direct, an intelligent, and 
an authoritative communication with those in 
the next plaue of life. 

The telegraph, the telephone, thought trans- 
ference, — here we have the ascending scale 
of communication : the telegraph for the brief- 
est messages of utility, the telephone for still 



72 After Her Death. 

more expanded and easy conversational in- 
tercourse, thought transference, or psychic 
telegraphy, for the still more swift, more in- 
dividual, more extended and satisfying inter- 
change. It is in this that the possibilities lie 
of direct communication with those who have 
passed beyond death. The cruder forms of 
physical phenomena served their purpose to 
arrest the attention of a cruder age. It is for 
this age to develop the method of psychic 
communion. It would seem, indeed, that 
humanity is already on the threshold of new 
and finer phases of psychical experience and 
convincing evidence of the close relations ex- 
isting between the Seen and the Unseen 
worlds. If science has not yet proved Immor- 
tality, it has certainly penetrated very near to 
some of the conditions of the life just beyond 
this. Many of these conditions are adapted 
to the higher development of this life. For 
instance, the X ray of Roentgen enables the 
physical eye to penetrate a solid substance, as 
before its discovery the speculative thinker 
believed only the spiritual eye could do. By 



Distant Gates of Eden. 73 

means of the telephone, man becomes practi- 
cally clairaudient. The invention whereby 
one may be enabled to see as well as to hear, 
at the distance of a thousand miles, is on its 
way to being perfected. Xow, the annihila- 
tion of space is, distinctively, a condition 
which has always been associated with man's 
ideas of the spiritual world, where to think, 
or to will, was to be. But through mar- 
vellous, although natural inventions, the in- 
habitants of this world are coming to enter 
somewhat upon these conditions. The ar- 
rangements being made for the test and trial 
and exhibition of electrical apparatus at the 
Exposition of 1900 in Paris almost surpass 
imagination. To be propelled through the air, 
as it were, on wires from the Eiffel Tower to 
the dome of the Trocadero, by the electric 
motor, is almost equal to flying through the 
air. The photography of thought, which is 
an accomplished fact ; the marvellous preser- 
vation of the voice in the phonograph, — these 
and other of the new discoveries of hitherto 
latent forces of nature are impressive indica- 



74 After Her Death. 

tions of the manner in which the spiritual 
insight and energy of man are penetrating 
the secrets of the universe. 

It is, perhaps, not illogical to reason that 
the life just beyond death is one that differs 
from ours only in that of this higher and 
larger knowledge of controlling the laws of 
nature. 

Dr. Edward 0. Day in a recent article 
says : — 

"The Sanscrit logicians declare that, apart 
from the physical or gross body, which disinte- 
grates at death, there exists an ethereal or 
'subtile body/ which, though material, is so 
subtile as thus far to have escaped the investi- 
gations of science; that this, not the gross 
body, is the perceiver, actor, and director of 
the personality ; that it uses the physical body 
as an instrument, but at the same time receives 
impressions from it in varying degrees of in- 
tensity proportioned to their higher or lower 
rates of vibration, — coarser or finer materiality. 
These impressions are said to impart an indel- 
ible coloring to the 'subtile body/ 



Distant Gates of Eden. 75 

"At death this ' subtile body' is said to go 
out with a definite rate of vibration, — which 
predetermines the succeeding stage of experi- 
ence. Saint Paul may refer to this when he 
says : ' There is a natural body and a spiritual 
body;' and when he questions 'With what 
body do they come ?' is it not this spiritual 
body to which reference is made ? " 

Almost the only practical difference to-day 
between the conservative and the more ad- 
vanced views of spiritual belief is that while 
both believe in the immortality of the soul, 
the one regards death as final separation from 
those remaining on this plane of life. If 
A is to outlive B for fifty years, then must 
he wait fifty years before again having com- 
panionship with his friend ; while the newer 
belief is that between B in the Unseen and 
A in the Seen there may be a perpetual in- 
tercourse of spirit to spirit. Thus, if A felt 
himself constantly companioned, it would not 
only infinitely lessen all the anguish of bereave- 
ment, but would be the constant stimulus to 
live that higher life of the spirit ; that life 



76 After Her Death. 

which is joy, peace, and love, — that life 
whose joy, peace, and love can only be 
wrought out of the moral virtues of truth, 
honesty, courtesy, and flawless integrity. In 
fact, this belief gives the most remarkable 
impetus to the spiritualization of life. 

Not, of course, that one desires to believe 
what is not true. Who would consent to 
dwell in a fool's paradise ? If death is the en- 
tire separation from those dearest to us until 
we, too, die, then by all means let us know it, 
let us recognize and accept it. Even that be- 
lief is not without its consolations, for death is 
the one certain and inevitable experience that 
awaits us all. It would be, at most, only a 
question of time. 

Still it is, indeed, less as a matter of per- 
sonal consolation and comfort — great as is 
the factor of personal happiness in life — than 
it is as a matter of the higher development; 
of responsive interest in being in touch with 
the life of the higher plane, that the realiza- 
tion of immediate intercourse between the 
two worlds is of greatest value. The mere 



Distant Gates of Eden. 77 

phenomenon — which is only associated with 
the presence of a medium — is merely the 
rudimentary stage of this finer realization. Its 
principal service has been to establish the 
reality of the close relation between the two 
planes of life. It is at best a clumsy mecha- 
nism : but it is a question whether any other 
means than that appealing to the physical 
senses would ever have succeeded in arousing 
popular interest. For half a century these 
physical manifestations have been on trial, as 
it were, and that they are now generally ac- 
cepted as having in them elements impos- 
sible to explain on any other hypothesis is 
conceded. 

The general recognition and acceptance of 
the truth that the life beyond this is more 
real, even as mature life is more real than 
childhood, is so rapidly increasing that it 
amounts to a new development in the human 
race. More important even than this is the 
recognition that the spiritual world is a mat- 
ter of condition ; that it can be experienced 
before death ; and that just in proportion as 



78 After Her Death. 

life is elevated and noble and generous and 
loving, in that proportion does one live in the 
spiritual or the more real world. " Thoughts 
let us into realities," said Emerson. To just 
that degree in which one lives in the spirit 
may there be communication or communion 
between the two w r orlds. The religious term 
has always been " communion/' signifying the 
meeting and mingling of mind. The term 
" communication " has come to be regarded as 
phenomenon, which again is widely discussed 
and criticised as being genuine or fraudulent. 
But any communion at all is certainly commu- 
nication, although it may be in the higher 
region of impressions rather than the one of 
definite messages. That form is, too, more 
desirable, even though there may be at times 
legitimate desire for special word or message 
regarding some specific matter. But the 
church has always recognized the possibility 
and the actual existence of communion, and 
has held the " communion of the saints " to be 
among the richest spiritual blessings. 
Edgar Fawcett has recently said : — 



Distant Gates of Eden. 79 

" From Sir Francis G-alton, an English astron- 
omer of wide repute, comes the tidings that 
Mars is sending us signals, and that he has 
already resolved these into sentences, and the 
sentences he has separated into letters. It is a 
celestial cipher, affirms Sir Francis Galton, but 
one of which he has not yet found the key. 
Some huge electric invention has been con- 
structed by the Martians, and planetary cur- 
rents are made so subservient to its enormous 
energies that an incessant telegraphy is going 
on with interstellar ether for its medium. 
Working in one of the great European obser- 
vatories, Sir Francis has constructed, it is de- 
clared, an apparatus which he placed next to 
the telescope he employed, and which has 
given him the most amazing results. He is 
now convinced that earnest efforts are being 
made by Mars to hold with us intelligent con- 
verse. ' He has not yet been able to decipher 
the exact meaning of these words which the 
Martian telegraph operators have been flashing 
toward us/ runs a startling article full of 
apparent veracity, 'but that they constitute 
long messages, and are meant to be read by 
the inhabitants of the earth, he has no doubt.' 



80 After Her Death, 

"Now suppose that all this budget of seeming 
miracle has fact for its base. Interplanetary 
communication is not really more wonderful 
than intercontinental communication — than 
the leagues of cable which already wed Europe 
to the west. And yet if the people on Mars 
should ever speak with us, how transcendently 
mighty would be the epoch ! Every event in 
history would pale before it." 

When a scholarly writer who is in no w T ise 
inclined toward spiritual speculation yet de- 
clares that " Interplanetary communication is 
not really more wonderful than intercontinental 
communication," it registers the amazing ad- 
vance of the thought of the day. 

The interplanetary communication seems a 
possible and a reasonable thing. Not less so, 
but more, seems the probable, the inevitable 
establishment of communication, in recognized, 
definite form, between the visible and the 
ethereal worlds, or between those here and 
those who have passed beyond death. In 
the sense of communion the process is tele- 
pathy. There is probably far more of that 



Distant Gates of Eden. 81 

going on with each and all than any one is 
fully aware, for just what thoughts may be 
suggested by the invisible companions, and 
just what the mind itself suggests in its action 
is by no means discriminated. Yet with at- 
tention and with sufficient growth of spiritual 
life, this form of communication — the highest 
and most satisfactory — may grow clear and 
recognizable. One may come to realize the 
thought, or the words, of the invisible com- 
panion as definitely as those of any caller or 
visitor or companion in this life. 

This recognition grew to me constantly 
more clear and definite in relation to her. 
About this time I left Paris for a long journey 
through southern Europe. From the hour of 
entering Switzerland until we reached Vienna, 
the route through the Alps and the Tyrol was 
one of picturesque and poetic beauty. Never 
could we forget the atmospheric effects through 
the Tyrol, where clouds and peaks combined 
in mythological forms till one fairly saw the 
gods of Hellas towering in the sky. While in 
Vienna, once in the marvellous cathedral of 
6 



82 After Her Death. 

Saint Stephen, and again on an enchanted 
afternoon with Madame Materna, while with 
her in the rose-garden that glows and gleams 
in the grounds of her beautiful villa, there 
were recognitions on my part of a presence 
invisible to others, but not in a way suffi- 
ciently striking to relate. Later came a visit 
to Hungary, where every hour was full of 
activities ; a journey to Venice via Fiume, 
around the blue Adriatic, and then — Venice. 
Her towers and marble palaces rose from the 
water like a dream, like a mirage, like a ma- 
gician's spell ; and one felt the thrill of the 
vague memory, — 

" Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 
In what diviner sphere — " 

And in the strange silence of this dream city 
I again began to realize her companionship. 

Experiences grew still more vivid during an 
evening journey, after Venice had faded like 
a wraith in the distance, and the route lay 
through a region where the purple peaks of 
the Apennines were swimming in a sea of 



Distant Gates of Eden. 83 

silver mist. They deepened and multiplied 
while in Florence, where more than once invisi- 
ble guidance led me to place or picture that 
otherwise I should have missed. 

At the same time general assertions of this 
nature carry no weight, and this little record 
must limit itself to such experiences as can be 
more definitely stated. 



UNTO MY HEAET THOU 
LIVEST SO. 

For you cannot talk of matter alone. If you say 
matter, you must say spirit. They are the two sides 
of the one existence, and are never to be separated 
from each other in fact, although in thought we dis- 
tinguish them by quality, in order that we may be 
able to think at all. But in manifestation they are 
never apart. There is no such thing as spirit, or 
force, or life, without matter, by which it takes its 
form, by which it shows its energy. 

Annie Besant. 

" How can I cease to pray for thee ? Somewhere 
In God's great universe thou art to-day. 
Can He not reach thee with His tender care ? 
Can He not hear me when for thee I pray? 

" What matters it to Him who holds within 

The hollow of His hand all worlds, all space, 
That thou art done with earthly pain and sin ? 
Somewhere within His ken thou hast a place. 

u Somewhere thou livest and hast need of Him ; 

Somewhere thy soul sees higher heights to climb ; 
And somewhere still there may be valleys dim 
That thou must pass to reach the hills sublime.* 




UNTO MY HEART THOU LIYEST SO. 

" Sometimes wherever I may go 

Unto my heart thou livest so, 

I marvel if the forms I meet, 

The speech I hear, be Time's deceit, — 

If viewlessness and silence screen 

More life than can be heard and seen." 

HO far from the relations between 
friends being ended by death, it is 
only then that they begin. Then, 
if they are real, a readjustment 
takes place that perfects the mutual sym- 
pathy and comprehension. If there is no true 
spiritual relation but only the so-called friend- 
ship of the convenience of the moment, or of 
external attraction, the event of death termi- 
nates it, even as it deepens and enlarges all real 
relations. 

" The rose that blossomed not 
Lives in our hearts forever, 
And hands ne'er clasped in life 
Death has no power to sever." 



88 After Her Death. 

A very potent and marvellous uplifting to 
the diviner world is the invariable experience 
after one most beloved has gone on into the 
invisible realm. The readjustment of relations 
begins to take place. It is life that separates ; 
it is death that unites. While the spirit is in- 
habiting the physical body it is screened, im- 
prisoned, as it were ; and the assertion of a 
German philosopher, that no man ever saw or 
ever was seen by his fellow-man, is literally 
true. 

" You do not see my friend at all ) 
You see what hides him from your sight/ 7 

well writes a poet. " Spiritual things are 
spiritually discerned ; " and to recognize each 
other truly, even while here, we must all be 
discerners of spirits. Life is just as sacred as 
death. We are building up our spiritual re- 
lationships and conditions every hour and 
every day ; and to just the degree in which one 
can live in the spirit here, and regard all his 
friendships as spiritual relationships, — so to 
that extent does he transcend death, and es- 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 89 

tablish, here and now, the conditions that this 
change cannot destroy nor greatly affect. 

When the spiritual being that has lived a 
certain period here slips out of its physical 
body and is free from material clogs and lim- 
itations, the readjustment in a number of 
ways is made. Those who still remain in 
this world are far more truly recognized. 
Some have been unduly appreciated ; some 
have been underestimated. The risen spirit- 
ual being, now being able to discern spiritual 
states and to adjust all to a new scale of 
values, rearranges his loves and friendships, so 
to speak. In fact, here is the type of the 
judgment clay. 

Instead of any sadness or despair when 
death comes near to us, the true view is sim- 
ply one of exaltation and of happiness, hereto- 
fore undreamed. 

The evidence of immortality, and of sweet, 
swift communion between the visible and the 
invisible worlds, is in one's own soul. 

" The witness is within, 5 ' as Whittier truly 
says. To talk of so-called " spiritualism " and 



90 After Her Death. 

" mediums " as the final tests or as the arbiters 
of a future life, in which to believe or not to 
believe, according as to whether a " communi- 
cation " seems genuine or not, is a moral state 
so puerile and so insignificant as to be unwor- 
thy extended allusion, — much less discussion. 
It is nothing less than sacrilege to hear a man 
say that he rests his faith or unfaith, — his 
belief or his disbelief in Immortality and the 
divine life, the life more abundant that is en- 
tered by the process we call death, — that he 
bases this faith on the fact of a " medium's " 
giving or not giving him a message from his 
relative or his friend who has died. If he 
have no realization of his own spiritual nature ; 
if he does not perceive and feel and recognize 
the realities of the higher life in which it is 
his privilege to live even while in the physical 
body, — then no " tests " are of the slightest 
importance. But, once realizing himself as 
a spirit here and now, and recognizing his 
true relations to the spiritual world, then he 
may, under certain conditions, find the same 
added joy in exchanging messages with his 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 91 

friend in the other life that he would find in 
correspondence, or in visits in this life. It is 
simply the extension of friendly intercourse. 

The conditions for this extension of inter- 
course between the Seen and the Unseen are 
to live in the spirit here and now. " The 
committal of the soul to God/' as Professor 
Amiel well phrases it, is the one condition of 
the perception of spiritual life. You " belong 
to God." And " if one belongs to God, he must 
live worthily of Him." He " keeps an open 
mind to divine instruction." The communion 
with the Unseen is continually possible, and 
to some degree is continually carried on. 

Still, while phenomena are less important 
than the unerring perception of intuition and 
spiritual recognition, it would be ignorance or 
falsehood to deny that there is definite and 
authentic communication between one in this 
world and one in the world beyond made pos- 
sible by the peculiar organization of certain 
persons termed mediums, or psychics. One of 
these had prophesied to me, a number of years 
ago, that I should go to Europe with the 



92 After Her Death. 

friend referred to in these pages. Two years 
later the same prophecy from the same psychic 
was repeated. At that time it had grown 
more improbable than even at first, and, re- 
marking on this to the medium, the reply was, 
" It will be ; I see you there together." 

It was on the June Sunday that I sat by 
the grave of Mrs. Browning in the English 
Cemetery at Florence that this prophecy 
flashed upon my remembrance. That she went 
to the higher life the very day of my landing 
at Liverpool ; that all the story here narrated 
had been lived ; that I had been so curi- 
ously conscious of her presence and compan- 
ionship in a way that had increased constantly, 
— were facts that, to the most incredulous 
mind, could not but have been startling. 

On returning from Europe, I communicated 
this prophecy, and the curious coincidence of 
date, at least, if not (as I believed) the ful- 
filment of it, to Dr. Richard Hodgson, the 
eminent and critical scholar and thinker who 
is the Secretary of the Society for Psychical 
Research. Dr. Hodgson was impressed by 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 93 

it, and promised that I should again have a 
" sitting " with the psychic, whom I had not 
seen for a number of years and who, in the 
mean time, had come to be under the auspices 
of the Society and could only be seen by offi- 
cial permission. Professor James of Harvard 
University, Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge, 
England, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, and other 
learned men had studied and tested this 
psychic, and the result was a conviction that 
the phenomena which occurred through her 
were inexplicable on any other theory than 
that of communication from those in the life 
just beyond. By Dr. Hodgson's courtesy I 
went to this lady for a sitting, which has 
subsequently been followed by several others. 
On the first occasion there were written 
(through the automatic writing of the psy- 
chic) some two hundred pages signed with 
the name of the friend referred to in this book. 
But the signature was as unimportant a fea- 
ture in the communication itself as is the sis:- 
nature of any personal letter from a familiar 
friend. Not only various characteristic forms 



94 After Her Death. 

of expression, strong individualities, and allu- 
sions, and circumstances were evident ; but 
besides a clear and rational explanation of a 
matter that had been perplexing was given, — 
an explanation involving the story of an event 
of which I, at that time, had never heard, 
with its place, time, and participants all 
written out, and which afterward, I learned 
from one or the persons involved, to have 
been entirely correct. Still, however remark- 
able was the nature of this first interview, 
it is hardly to be compared to subsequent 
oneSo In fact, the narration of all these up to 
the present time would offer a story to test 
the credulity of any one ; and still — and it 
is this fact which is the key-note of the book, 
which is my raison d'etre for writing it at 
all, — still, this entire story of the several long 
communications received through this psychic, 
is one that is, by its very nature, provable before 
any tribunal. Let any jury of fair and intelli- 
gent men — with no predilections in favor of 
the possibility of its truth, but who were sim- 
ply intelligent and just — let any such jury 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 95 

be called, and the communications themselves 
be submitted, and the living witnesses called 
who could, and would, corroborate assertions, 
allusions, and circumstances, and the verdict 
of authenticity and genuineness would be 
inevitable. 

In no wise am I a special pleader for the 
thing called Spiritualism. In common with 
all sincere persons my only desire is to perceive 
and to believe the truth. 

To relate here the story of this train of evi- 
dences would require an octavo volume ; and 
also, as will readily be recognized, such a narra- 
tive would be of too personal a nature to quite 
admit of public record. Still, while personal, 
it is not, necessarily, private. The life and 
deeds of a woman simple, noble, truthful, sin- 
cere, great in heart and in mind, does not 
involve secrets, so to speak. One may have 
scruples of delicacy against relating matters 
which are, after all, open enough to every one 
interested. 

On one occasion I had asked her the 
question, u Can you read writing — ordinary 



98 After Her Death. 

manuscript ? " The reply was : " Of course I 
can, but I can read your soul better. I see your 
thoughts most clearly." Again the question 
was asked, " Can you — the spiritual beings 
in the spiritual world — read our books, — the 
general literature here ? " To which was re- 
plied, " No, dear, not exactly, yet the idea is 
understood by us." " Can you hear me if I 
read aloud to you ?" " Yes, perfectly. Speak- 
ing aloud has an effect. It reaches us better 
and clearer." "Is the other life as different 
from ours here as we have thought ? " " Oh, 
no, dear; it is just like going from one room 
into another. It is so beautiful, and there is 
such freedom and clearness of thought. I never 
struggle with my own mind here. And the 
travelling is delightful. The sensation of riding 
through the air is delicious." "Is the com- 
munication between you and myself more di- 
rect than is usual between two who are on the 
different planes, — the Seen and the Unseen ? " 
" Yes, it may be said to be, because there are few 
persons who are so near each other." At one 
sitting the spirit friend took the initiative and 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 97 

wrote : " Dearest , come near to me and 

answer a few questions." The questions were 
asked, — regarding the disposition of certain 
affairs, and other matters, — showing as clear 
memory and perception of events and circum- 
stances as would have been shown had the 
friends met in this world after a separation. 

Naturally, the personal matters which taste 
forbids me to narrate would be evidential in 
their nature, while questions and responses of 
this impersonal kind are not. This is a diffi- 
culty which forms an inexorable limitation in 
any writing upon this subject. 

The teachings of religion, while holding in 
essence the deepest truth, have been so largely 
figurative that they have left the ideas of the 
life beyond in a maze of abstract mystery. 
There is a mystic beauty in the picture of 
standing before the throne of God holding 
palm branches, but it is one that must be re- 
ceived in its mystic sense and not translated 
literally. Truth and fact are by no means 
synonymous. The one is eternal, the other 
transient. 

7 






98 After Her Death. 

It is the province of psychic science to pro- 
ject its discoveries of the nature of the life 
beyond this. Religion, in its usual teachings, 
gives the great truths in mystical and figurative 
phrase. To recognize the Divine Father and 
Jesus the Christ, and to know that He is the 
way, the truth, and the life ; to accept the 
truth of the immortal nature of the soul, — this 
is the supremely important matter; but as 
intelligent beings, who, by the law of evolu- 
tion, are developing into constantly higher 
states, it may be as much a part of the true 
province of knowledge to extend the domain 
of investigation into the forces of spirit, as 
well as into those of nature. It is no less 
reverent, surely, to inquire into the nature 
and destiny of the soul than it is to inquire 
into the nature and use of any form of the di- 
vine creation. The intelligent and faithful 
student of psychic science is working toward 
the discovery of the new immaterial world, as 
Columbus was toward the discovery of a new 
continent. In fact, as the two hemispheres of 
the East and the West correspond, so are this 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 99 

world and that just beyond death in corre- 
spondence. The infinite progression of the 
soul is in states or series of lives. The one 
lying just beyond this does not differ from 
ours so greatly as has been believed. It is 
not a vague region somewhere in inconceiva- 
ble space, where inconceivable beings wave 
palm branches ; but a world differing from 
this only in degree, and by a difference hardly 
more marked than that which lies between the 
New England of 1620 and of 1900. If one 
should dwell for a moment upon this land 
as the Pilgrims found it, and on the meagre 
resources up to 1800 and later, as compared 
with the resources and activities of the past 
half-century, and more especially of those of 
the present decade, he will realize how the 
constantly growing control of higher forces of 
nature transforms the life of man. Take away 
the steam-engine, the telegraph, the electric 
motor, the submarine cable, the telephone, to 
say nothing of the many other still more mar- 
vellous inventions and projections of modern 
science, — and how barren and meagre and 



100 After Her Death. 

limited is the life of man ! Without the 
steam-engine the distance from Boston to 
New York becomes a matter of six or seven 
days, rather than hours, making the two cities, 
practically, as far apart as New York and 
London. Without the telegraph and cable, 
life in every city or town is local and insu- 
lated from all the rest of the world. 

Now, take that still higher control of 
forces which is found in the ethereal world, 
and what is the result ? Our friends who 
have been liberated into that larger life by the 
process we name death find themselves in a 
realm where will and thought are forces. To 
will is to accomplish. The ethereal body is 
no longer subject to the law of gravitation. 
It is under the law of attraction. Communi- 
cation is carried on by that subtle and swift 
spiritual process of thought transference, or 
telepathy, which is the spirit language, and of 
which those in this world are already gaining 
some knowledge. Travelling is accomplished 
by floating at will through the air, — a sensa- 
tion said to be a delicious one. In this ethe- 



Unto my Heart thou livest so. 101 

real world a life similar to this, only higher 
and finer in degree, is lived. There are libra- 
ries, temples of worship, halls of music, and 
art. There are the occupations of reading, 
writing, study, invention. The law of service 
prevails in a diviner way than here, but one 
that, after all, would be quite possible here ; 
for this life may be divinely lived. The doc- 
trine of the Incarnation is the great lesson in 
divine living, here and now. " God is the 
only reality ; and we are real only so far as 
we are in His order and He in us." Truly, 
indeed, as faith varies, so does the life that 
comes of it. 



ACROSS THE WORLD I SPEAK 
TO THEE. 

" Spirits are not finely touched, 
But to fine issues.'' 

" From wave and star and flower 
Some effluence rare 

Was lent thee, — a divine but transient dower. 
Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair 
To wave and star and flower. ,? 



ACROSS THE WORLD I SPEAK TO 
THEE. 

11 Across the world I speak to th.ee ; 
Whether in yonder star thon be 
A spirit loosed in purple air ; 
Whether beneath the tropic-tree 
The cooling night-wind fans thy hair, — 
Whether in yonder star thou be, 
Across the world I speak to thee. 
Send thou a messenger to me.' 7 




HERE is coming to be a great 
change in the mental attitude to- 
ward death. Every sympathetic 
observer of life must recognize the 
increasing spirituality of the general feeling 
in regard to that event which sooner or later 
comes into every home, — death. Its dark- 
ness and extreme terror have almost disap- 
peared ; the time has gone when we affirmed 
by our lips, but denied by our conduct, our 
belief in immortality. Formerly — and much 
of it lingers at the present time — a death 



106 After Her Death. 

in the family plunged every member of it 
" into mourning." Usually the mourning is 
synonymous with grief, but not invariably. 
Whether it is the accompaniment of grief or 
only the conventional tribute to custom, it 
is a matter involving the element of trade 
and traffic; of the intrusion of bustle and 
material aifairs on hours that should be sacred 
to exaltation and to consecrated thought. 
Here is a great, new experience. One dearly 
beloved has gone on to the next higher plane 
of life. He is not dead ; he is more alive than 
ever before ; near and dear as the relations to 
him may have been on earth, now they may 
be infinitely nearer and dearer. Lowell ex- 
presses this truth in these lines : — 

" Now I can love thee truly, 
For nothing comes between 
The senses and the spirit, 
The seen and the unseen." 

Nor need death be thought of as formless 
and vague and void. "There is a natural 
body and there is a spiritual body," said Saint 
Paul. Psychic science has discovered and 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 107 

formulated, beyond question of doubt, certain 
truths about the life that lies just beyond this. 
These truths are as unquestionably attested 
as any truths of philosophy or of physics. 

First, " a spirit " is simply the spiritual being 
in the spiritual body, just as the individual 
here is the spiritual being in the physical body. 
The spiritual and the physical bodies corre- 
spond in all details of form. But the spiritual 
body is light and capable of swift movement, 
and is far more the expression of the spirit 
force than is the physical body. The phys- 
ical body is subject to the resistance of 
matter, while the spiritual body is not ; the 
one is subject to the law of gravitation, not 
so the other. The man living in the present 
life is essentially a spirit ; he does not " be- 
come " one by death, but merely slips out of 
the outer, coarser, physical body, and finds 
himself in this spiritual body with head and 
hands and feet, — the form he has been accus- 
tomed to. Now he has to do with finer 
agencies. Not necessarily is he remote from 
the space where those on earth are living. 



108 After Her Death. 

He has achieved a higher plane of conscious- 
ness than he had here ; but that does not 
necessarily imply a geographical or astronomi- 
cal change of place. This truth is readily 
recognized by a moment's reflection on the 
way numerous and varied grades of life may 
go on within the same physical space, from 
the " insensate clod " to the insect, the ani- 
mal, the human being ; from the criminal to 
the saint. 

The event of death does not probably at 
once change a man's nature. It effects no 
miraculous or instantaneous change in the 
quality of his spirit. There are spirits still in 
the physical body much more exalted than 
some who have gone out of the physical body. 
Still, the general tendency is upward, for the 
one fact of the loss of relations with material 
things tends to spiritualization. 

It is more than probable that there is never 
a time when the friend here can be so much 
aid and comfort to the one he holds dear as 
just after that one has passed through death. 
" You can do nothing more for him," is some- 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 109 

times heard. "His life is closed." "He has 
gone forever/' Never were words more mis- 
leading. His friend can do more than ever 
for him. His life is not closed, but — begun. 
He has not "gone forever/ but rather he is 
nearer, closer, in more tender relation than 
was heretofore permitted him to be. The 
masses for the dead in the Catholic Church 
rest on the deepest spiritual truth. And how 
beautiful are the sacred words of which the 
first lines are, — 

" Eternal rest give unto them, Lord, and 
let- perpetual light shine upon them." 

To hold sacred and peaceful the season of 
death is to enter into its most divine uplift- 
ing. Violent grief must be torture to the one 
who is gone, and who is vainly striving to 
make those here understand that he is only 
more alive than they are, — alive with a keener, 
finer, more exalted life. The truly enlightened 
vision will yet come to regard death as a 
sacred festival, a spiritual sacrament, instead 
of a time of tears and seclusion and sel- 



110 After Her Death. 

fish grief, — for, however unconsciously, such 
grief is selfish; instead of this, it will be a 
period when the nearer friends will lift up 
their hearts with a new and deeper sense of 
the spiritual life ; when spirit to spirit — the 
one in the life beyond, the other in this life — 
shall meet more nearly, more truly responsive 
than ever before, and a closer sense of the 
divine love encompass them round about. 

" The unknown is not by any necessity the 
unknowable," said Bishop Phillips Brooks. In 
that assertion there lies a profound truth, to 
which one of almost equal significance might be 
added ; namely, that the effort to investigate 
the unknown, and if possible to transmute it 
into the known, is not demoralizing. On the 
contrary, the entire progress of the world has 
depended on those persons who did not re- 
gard ignorance as synonymous with righteous- 
ness ; whose horizon of possibilities was not 
bounded by the perceptions of the senses ; 
who did not fear to take risks and steer into 
the unknown. That the Copernican theory 
of the universe replaced the Ptolemaic is due 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. Ill 

to the faith of Galileo in new and independent 
investigation. The discovery and establish- 
ment of the law of gravitation is due to New- 
ton's higher penetration into nature's laws. 
The constant progress of electrical science, 
which is revolutionizing all the conditions of 
modern life, is due to faith, insight, experi- 
ment ; to patient and persistent endeavor ; to 
unwearied effort in the pursuit of new forces. 
The law of psychical communication will be 
discovered by the same power of patient, per- 
sistent effort ; by critical scrutiny of all alleged 
messages received and close study of the con- 
ditions involved. Faith is not credulity ; nor 
is denial, and refusal to study and consider, 
any mark of a superior intelligence. 

" The spirit world around this world of sense 
Floats like an atmosphere.'' 

All life that is spiritual life, whether in the 
physical or the psychical body, — that is, 
whether before death or after death, — is of 
this atmosphere. The spiritual world is a 
condition and not a location. It will readily 
be seen from analogies in this world how very 



112 After Her Death. 

different degrees of life can go on in the same 
space. Take any one block of a city, even 
any two homes next door to each other, or 
even any two rooms in one house, and consider 
how, under the same roof, in what is practi- 
cally the same material space, two individual 
lives may go on, — the one exalted, noble, 
open to every divine influence ; the other, 
poor, mean, dwarfed, darkened. Thus it will 
be seen that in the same space the spiritual 
and physical worlds may coexist, each being 
a condition. 

There is a supreme need in the life of to- 
day : that theology shall lift itself to spiritual- 
ity. Religion is not an argument, or even a 
creed : it is life and love ; it is the recogni- 
tion of spiritual laws. " To make habitually a 
new estimate, that is elevation." Religion 
needs to take account of the new estimate, of 
that vast and momentous array of psychic 
truth that is the discovery of this age. The 
treasure-stores of the invisible realm are open 
to the spiritual perception of the present. 
Telepathy is not merely the phenomenal means 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 113 

of communication between two persons who 
are widely separated by distance ; but it is 
also the appointed means by which the inhab- 
itants of the invisible world are giving us of 
their knowledge, their counsel. To be able to 
receive this one must live in touch with the 
higher life, — that is, he must himself live the 
higher life of love, sweetness, sympathy. He 
must live " as seeing Him who is invisible." 
Falsehood, hatred, wrong- doing of any kind 
build up a barrier between those in this life 
and in the one beyond. In so far as there are 
moral defects, there is not spiritual life. To 
hold communion with friends in the life be- 
yond, one must lift himself to that life. He 
must spiritualize his conditions of thought, 
of aspiration. 

There is perhaps no power that organized 
religion could bring to bear on general life 
which would be so all-compelling in its results 
as to impress the reality of communion be- 
tween the visible and the invisible. In the 
light of that realization every noble aspiration 
is intensified ; every ignoble one revealed in 



114 After Her Death. 

its true paltriness and meanness. The life 
that is possible in its resplendence, its exalta- 
tion, its loveliness, its charm, is seen in vivid 
contrast with a mere existence of worry, care, 
perplexity, and strife. It is not so much that 
if one lives nobly he shall go to beautiful con- 
ditions at death ; it is that he shall have the 
beautiful conditions : the realization of inter- 
course with the invisible world here and now. 
Here, not merely hereafter : now, not in some 
vague and far off eternity. 

In the natural evolution of progress the 
time is now approaching for a new revelation 
of the life just beyond the event we call death. 
Nearly nineteen hundred years ago Jesus, the 
Christ, gave the revelation suited to the com- 
prehension of that time, and which has sufficed 
for the growing advancement of the centuries 
since. The law of progress that prevails in 
the divine creation has now brought the 
human race to that point where it is prepared 
to comprehend more completely the conditions 
and experiences beyond. This need will be met. 
We stand on the threshold of a new revelation. 



Ac7*oss the World I Speak to Thee. 115 

As Bishop Brooks with his illuminated 
spiritual vision so clearly foresaw, the special 
will and purpose of God and the correspond- 
ing activity of man must produce a mutual- 
ness of knowledge. Jesus " knew the Father 
by a direct perception of kindred life." Herein 
lies the only clue to the spiritual world. Live 
the kindred life, — and the realm is open to 
him who so dwells in the divine atmosphere. 

Bishop Brooks offers an ideal that may well 
be translated into a standard for every life in 
the words — 

" The life of the Christ so far as it was public 
was comprised within three years and a few 
months. For that the previous thirty years 
had been a preparation. During all that time 
He was receiving instruction from those ex- 
alted angels who inspired him with zeal and 
love for His mission. He was a constant com- 
muner with the world of spirit, and was the 
more able to drink in their teachings that His 
body was no bar to His spirit." 

To be "a communer with the world of 
spirit " ! Is it not thus that this present life 



116 After Her Death. 

in the visible is linked with that life upon 
which we are all to enter, just beyond in the 
invisible ; that on the faithful and earnest per- 
formance and fulfilment of all that is set be- 
fore us in this world depends the degree of 
fitness we carry with us to enter on the reali- 
ties of that world ? 

That the communication between that world 
and this is open to all who understand and 
fulfil the conditions is beyond question ; but it 
is a matter of spirituality of life, of high 
achievement in essential qualities, rather than 
of phenomena. It is only by the knowledge 
and practice of psychic laws that this commun- 
ion may become definite to the intellectual 
perception. 

But is there any difference, it may be asked, 
between spiritual perception and psychic 
knowledge? It would seem that there is. 
The one is intuitive ; the other as intellectual 
as the science of numbers. That holy men of 
all ages have had the open communion with 
the spiritual world, that they have been in 
touch with divine forces, there can be no 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 117 

doubt; but it has been left for the present 
age to formulate the spiritual laws and appre- 
hend them as psychic science. The man who 
never heard of Newton, or of the law of gravi- 
tation, is as much subject to its effects as the 
savant ; but he is ignorantly and blindly — not 
intelligently — subject to the law. 

There are many persons who are curious 
rather than interested in all that pertains to 
the life beyond, and who, knowing little and car- 
ing less for that spirituality of life which alone 
makes possible the sweet and constant com- 
munion between the Seen and the Unseen, go 
to a " medium " as they would go to the theatre. 
They go for a sensation, a phenomenon, and 
if they do not experience this, are not back- 
ward in denouncing the possible communica- 
tion, and even in denying all belief in a future 
life. Communion with a friend in the Unseen, 
while under favorable conditions it may as- 
sume a definite form of appeal to the sight 
or hearing by means of a medium, is by no 
means limited to some chance hour thus taken 
at intervals. It is a matter of mutual compre- 



118 After Her Death. 

hension and sympathy, — of spirit to spirit, — 
just as is the companionship and communion 
of life. It is, so to speak, an achievement of 
one's whole soul, in solitude and in silence, in 
its conscious and unerring recognition of the 
invisible and the divine. It is the end, not 
the immediate reward, that is the true object 
of quest in life. To set one's heart 

" upon the goal, 
Not on the prize/ 5 

is the true attitude of mind. All the powers 
of nature, all the powers of the universe, are 
plastic to the force of thought. In thought is 
the spiritual power to act on conditions. To 
enlarge and elevate life to the plane of thought, 
to the recognition of divine purposes, to 
enter into harmony with these, — in this at- 
mosphere alone may one come, not " to com- 
pete or strive," but to be enabled to so live 
as those spirits 

" With whom the stars connive 
To work their will." 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 119 

The world is fast approaching the plane 
whereon the higher forces of nature hold sway. 
The old order changeth. All the mechanism 
of life is to be more swift, more subtile, more 
responsive. The slow and clumsy processes 
of the past are rapidly fading away, and the 
finer forces take their place. We do not now 
fill lamps, or even strike matches and light the 
gas ; we turn the key, and, presto ! the room 
is flooded with electric light. The time is 
close at hand when the endless manual labor 
of a large correspondence will be superseded 
by thought transference. The steam-engine 
gives place to the electric motor. 

As with the finer and more subtile natural 
forces, so with the spiritual. Love and ser- 
vice — a loving service — is the finest expres- 
sion life can assume. Generosity is a luxury 
even before it is a virtue. He who has it in 
his power to oblige another, he it is who tastes 
the diviner richness of life. 

Love and service, — in these is found the 
preparation for the life beyond. In the per- 
petual angelic communion is found the energy 



120 After Her Death. 

which radiates in service and in love. Let 
these two elements enter into every expe- 
rience, informing it with joy and love and 
peace and exaltation, and life shall take on 
new significances and deeper richness. 

For man is created for the higher, not 
for the lower life. When he lives below his 
moral ideals, he is out of his habitat, — as a 
bird would be in the water, or a fish in the 
air. He was created for a spiritual atmos- 
phere, and only in that does he realize his 
true being. 

The year of 1897 dawns in brilliancy of ra- 
diant promise. Psychical research and scien- 
tific experiment and demonstration are serving 
religious truth. Science is revealing powers 
of nature, — higher forces hitherto unsuspected. 
The marvellous X-ray, that is even promis- 
ing to enable the blind to see, and, what is 
perhaps more marvellous, is revealing those 
high vibrations of the luminiferous ether 
which convey that force we call thought 
from mind to mind without the intervention 
of the cells of the brain, — what a revelation 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 121 

is this ! For it is nothing short of the absolute 
demonstration of spiritual communication. It 
explains how thought leaps from spirit to 
spirit, transcending the mental mechanism, 
showing a process more delicate, more subtile, 
than were the marvels of the mind that had 
heretofore been known. 

One reason why there has been so little, 
comparatively speaking, received of authentic 
communications from the unseen world that 
hold much degree of universal significance, is 
that the requisite conditions on this side have 
not been observed. Intense and devoted love 
has followed to the tomb, — and there it has 
been stayed. Devoted love has made keen 
the anguish of grief, but it has not possessed 
immediate faith. At the best, it has found 
what solace it might in the conviction of re- 
union after death, but it has held no immedi- 
ate convictions of satisfactory communication 
now and here. Theology has looked upon 
it as a false and vain idea; the so-called 
spiritualist has too largely held it to be a 
phenomenon of occasion, and the general 



122 After Her Death. 

public have lost no time in any meditation 
upon the philosophy, the speculative possi- 
bilities, or the truth underlying the subject. 
The devotion of thought and love that has 
usually followed those who have gone on 
into the other life has, for the most part, 
brooded over the past, but has not demanded 
the present. 

The year of 1897 marks a new and clearer 
consciousness of man's relation with the spirit- 
ual world. The Seen and the Unseen are 
coming into still clearer and nearer and more 
intimate union. The only true union is when 
the mortal lifts itself to the immortal ; when 
the advancing perception of man discovers 
more of the higher forces of nature, and learns 
to avail himself of these and to adjust his life 
to the plane of larger development. The com- 
munion between the Seen and the Unseen 
is a part of that divine life which is the 
higher life. As the thought flashing from 
spirit to spirit, it is rational ; as a truth in 
the divine order, it is to be held in reverence 
and trust. * 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 123 

(t Dead ? Not to thee, thou keen watcher, — not 

silent, not viewless to thee, 
Immortal still wrapped in the mortal ! I, from 

the mortal set free, 
Greet thee by many clear tokens thou smilest to 

hear and to see." 

The clear recognition of this communion 
of spirit between the Seen and the Unseen is 
• one of the great features of the immediate 
future in the bringing of the earthly life of 
man into harmony with heavenly principles. 
A vast combination of forces are working to 
this result. As Kant so w^ell says, " The 
other world is not another place, but another 
view"." The spiritual world is about us as an 
atmosphere, and it lies with ourselves to enter 
into it more and more clearly and consciously, 
even .while our physical organism still holds us 
to the physical world. The assertion that the 
pure in heart shall see God is not a merely 
abstract religious phrase ; not one whose 
affirmative significance is restricted to experi- 
ences after death, but which may be realized 
now, to-day, this hour, every hour. To see 
God is to see, to perceive — which is a still 



124 After Her Death. 

higher degree of relation — the good ; to per- 
ceive and to be in touch with spiritual beings 
and divine forces. To be in and of this life is 
to live, now and here, in that atmosphere of 
joy, peace, and exhilaration which is heaven. 

In the realm of pure ether is the significant, 
the substantial world. Here the forces are 
delicate, imponderable, but infinitely more 
intense in energy. In just that proportion in 
which they are more delicate and immaterial 
are they more intense. Those who inhabit 
this ethereal world are embodied in the spirit- 
ual form, — in bodies electric in energy, that 
never know fatigue, and which are in perfect 
harmony with their environment. 

To come into a knowledge of conditions 
under which any satisfactory communion can 
be established between those still in this world 
and those in the Unseen, is to come into the 
knowledge of the conditions of spiritual life ; 
of that spiritualization of life through which 
alone any true and significant communion is 
possible. The atmosphere through which one 
in the Unseen may be enabled to draw near is 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 125 

that of radiating good-will and love. " Keep 
serene in mind, and have no unkind or im- 
patient thoughts of any one/' was the reply 
that she gave me when I once questioned her 
as to the best conditions for establishing com- 
munion between us. And now the bewilder- 
ing agony that swept over me when first I 
learned that she had gone to that fair country 
we shall all one day see, is transfigured to 
a constant sense of the sweet and radiant at- 
mosphere in which she lives ; and reading, 
study, work, social life, take on a new aspect 
and a higher charm, because every joy is 
doubled in this invisible but exquisite sense 
of companionship. 

"Regret is dead, but love is more 

Than in the summers that are flown; 
For I myself with these have grown 
To something greater than before." 

Psychic science may perhaps be said to have 
established the fact that the life just beyond 
the present one has some determinate limit, 
followed by another and another in succession, 
just as this life is limited by the event we call 



126 After Her Death. 

death ; and that this next life is not nearly so 
different from our own as has been conjec- 
tured. One goes by death, not into some 
vague celestial state, but into the ethereal 
world, which is a counterpart of this, only 
more real and more significant. The forces 
are more delicate and intense, as an electric 
motor, for instance, is more intense and deli- 
cate than a steam-engine ; as turning the key 
of an electric light is a more delicate and more 
potent process of obtaining illumination than 
to fill and light and adjust a kerosene lamp. 
If a journey is to be taken, those in the ethereal 
world do not need to prepare and pack trunks 
and go through the drudgery of preparation 
that is requisite here ; they make the jour- 
ney by the motor of thought. Life is one, 
even though it be divided by the change 
we call death. It is good to see it in its 
wholeness, and realize that change is not 
arbitrary and startling, but is simply devel- 
opment. 

Spirituality of life, while it may include phe- 
nomena, does not rest on any special manifes- 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 127 

tations. If it never experienced these, it would 
know the essential truth, even though it 
apprehended no details, of the life beyond. 
For spiritual things are spiritually discerned. 
It is written of Elijah, " But he, being full 
of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to 
heaven, saw the glory of God." But the con- 
dition for seeing the glory of God is in that he 
shall be "full of the Holy Ghost," full of 
the Holy Spirit. 

Of the life just beyond, what can more 
vividly present it than these words of Phillips 
Brooks : — 

"Heaven will not be pure stagnation, not 
idleness, not any mere luxurious dreaming over 
the spiritual repose that has been safely and 
forever won \ but active, tireless, earnest work ; 
fresh, live enthusiasm for the high labors which 
eternity will offer. These vivid inspirations 
will play through our deep repose, and make it 
more mighty in the service of God than any 
feverish and unsatisfied toil of earth has ever 
been. The sea of glass will be mingled with 
fire." 



128 After Her Death. 

The supreme truth of the present day is the 
fact that psychic science is steadily conquering 
new territory and reclaiming the vague and 
the unknown to the realm of rational and in- 
telligent comprehension. Richard Hodgson, 
LL.D., the Secretary of the Society for Psychi- 
cal Research, is now engaged in a series of 
researches whose results he will duly publish, 
and which will give to the world a clear, 
definite and scientifically attested knowledge 
of the conditions of the next life, which will 
be, practically, a new revelation. It has been 
my privilege to read these almost daily as his 
work has gone on ; and when they are pub- 
lished, the work will be of as marked impor- 
tance to the conduct of life as was Newton's 
Principia to the progress of science. These 
researches are revealing the location of the 
world we have called heaven; its place in 
the universe ; its nature, its conditions, and the 
manner in which its inhabitants approach the 
material world and come into a knowledge of 
our affairs, and into communication with us. 
The higher knov/ledge of ethics is involved 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 129 

in this new and larger comprehension of 
spiritual laws. 

The new discoveries of the mysteries of the 
ether are inseparably conjoined with new dis- 
coveries of psychic laws. The latest scientific 
truth formulated is that telegraphy can be 
accomplished without wires, the message sim- 
ply transmitted by means of electric waves in 
the ether. Since the discovery of the Ront- 
gen ray in the dawning of the year 1896, a 
vast mass of new data concerning light, elec- 
tricity, and various forms of energy have 
revealed themselves to the untiring efforts of 
science. It is now known that the brain is 
an electric battery : with the discovery of the 
electric waves that permeate the ether, the 
process of thought transference is as clear to 
the understanding as the ordinary sending of 
a telegram by wire. When it is further 
realized that death is merely the emerging 
from the physical case that has enveloped the 
real body, and that the spiritual being thus 
liberated comes into a condition of higher life 
and is in touch with the higher forces of 
9 



130 After Her Death. 

nature, then how simple and natural becomes 
the intercommunication of mind to mind, 
spirit to spirit. The poet's exclamation, 

" Across the world I speak to thee/' 

is the mere assertion of a fact. 

Of the extreme sensitiveness of this electric 
communication through the ether, I have be- 
come unmistakably conscious since she — who 
was dearest of all to me — has gone into the 
ethereal world. It is a literal fact that I have 
never appealed to her with any question, en- 
treaty, or endearment that the response has 
not been swift, definite, and unmistakable. 
This response is made in various ways. 
Sometimes it is telepathic directly from her 
mind to my own ; sometimes it is made 
through other persons who fulfil the matter 
regarding which I had appealed to her. There 
could be hundreds of pages filled with specific 
occurrences and incidents, each and all of 
which I could fully substantiate and corrobo- 
rate to the reader, save that one's sense of 
the delicacy and fitness of intimate experiences 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 131 

hardly admits of placing such inevitably per- 
sonal matters before the public. Yet — such 
is my serious conviction of the supreme im- 
portance of establishing the recognition of lar- 
ger spiritual outlook — I have been tempted 
to sacrifice any sense of literary art to the 
higher claim of psychic truth. 

The two conditions for entering into this 
beautiful and uplifting comprehension of the 
divine laws that govern the relations between 
the Seen and the Unseen are belief and 
prayer. It is prayer that lifts the soul into 
the ethereal region, and the command of the 
Christ to pray without ceasing defines the 
conditions of living in perpetual commun- 
ion with the diviner world. 

Love is not barred by death, but, rather, 
when the beloved has passed beyond the 
ethereal veil into that region which is still so 
near and interpenetrates all our atmosphere, 
then, indeed, is all affection, all friendship, all 
tenderness of devotion invested with new 
potencies. Then begins the real relation of 
spirit to spirit ; so infinitely nearer and clearer 



132 After Her Death. 

in its mutual comprehensiveness and love that 
one realizes suddenly how it is life that sepa- 
rates and death that unites. 

If the great grief that fell upon me on that 
radiant June morning last year — a grief that 
seemed to efface all possibilities of joy and to 
paralyze endeavor — shall have been the means 
of permitting me to enter on new paths of 
knowledge ; if it shall result in enabling my 
own experience to be even of the least ser- 
vice and comfort to others who know this 
supreme anguish in the death of their be- 
loved, — shall I not give thanks that it was 
sent to me, even as she, whose life here was con- 
stantly filled with the noblest aspirations and 
the divinest inspirations, would also rejoice to 
still further serve the humanity to whose aid 
and betterment her life was devoted ? Ah, 
that exquisite and lovely and radiant pres- 
ence ! that spirit so finely touched that only 
fine issues could await its progress ! She 
was one who impressed the imagination. She 
was indeed 

" Made of spirit, and fire, and dew/' 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 133 

and she always abounded in spiritual energy. 
Delicate in physique, artistic in temperament, 
lofty in all poetic and heroic feeling, hers was 
that intense and exquisitely wrought nature 
that leaves forever its haunting impress. The 
pathos of her death, alone, on that far-off 
island in the Pacific, lies with me " too deep 
for tears;" and my only claim to the hope 
and the prayer that this little story of the ex- 
periences and meditations after her death may 
possibly offer some comfort to those who have 
been bereaved, lies in the fact that life and 
work have been made possible to me again by 
the reality of my continued companionship 
with her. It comes in the sense of a spir- 
itual consciousness surrounding me like an 
atmosphere. 

One cannot offer mere personal impressions 
as proofs of his personal convictions ; but facts 
established both by science and by psychical 
research may be >presented. Science comes 
to the aid of psychic research, and the two, 
working along different lines, obtain results 
that harmonize and supplement each other. 



134 After Her Death. 

For instance, psychic research has brought 
to our conception the ethereal body, which 
is the finer counterpart of the physical, and 
has learned that all the senses save that of 
taste are retained and intensified, and that 
there are, also, indescribable new senses. 
Now science discovers that the ether is per- 
meated with electric waves, through which 
communication can be sent to any distance, 
without the slightest mechanism, — needing 
only the mind of the sender and the receiver. 
What is this but a spiritual communication ? 
And why is it not just as rational to suppose 
that two minds- — the one in the physical, 
the one in the ethereal world — can thus 
transmit messages to each other, as that a 
man in Calcutta can transmit a message to 
his friend in Chicago? 

The ether interpenetrates all our atmos- 
phere, and fills all interplanetary space. How 
easy and even inevitable then may communi- 
cation be between those in this world, or 
those here and those in the one beyond 
death ! And in this scientific fact, so recently 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 135 

discovered, lies the explanation of the process 
we call telepathy. This ether transmits sound 
waves at the rate of one hundred and ninety- 
two thousand miles per second. At this rate 
it does not take long to " put a girdle round 
the earth." 

The ethereal world is invisible to us simply 
because its life is a matter of higher vibrations. 
The human eye cannot see beyond the limit 
of a vibration of eight hundred trillions per 
second, and the human ear is likewise limited. 
So that all life in a higher state of vibration 
than this is invisible and inaudible. There 
is a field of tremendous forces in this upper 
region, which science is just beginning to 
apprehend. "The air is full of miracles/' 
says a recent authority. "The certainty is, 
strange things are coming, and coming soon." 

The ethereal world was open to Jesus be- 
cause he lived the life of spirituality. In 
proportion as one achieves this, does the 
realm just beyond grow clearer. In this 
spiritual perspective the experiences common 
to all are seen in their truer values. One 



136 After Her Death. 

comes to perceive that the only enduring re- 
alities are the moral victories which his higher 
nature gains over the lower. He discovers 
that external conditions are but the transitory 
scenery through which he is passing, and hold 
no permanent power for good or for ill over 
his life. 

The establishment of definite, recognized, 
and intelligent communication between the 
seen and the unseen would make a new era 
in the development of the race. To reject the 
idea as irreverent is as idle as it would be to 
deprecate establishing social relations with a 
neighboring city or continent. The advantage 
would be an infinite illumination in all arts 
and inventions that have to do with the 
higher forces of nature : in infinite comfort, 
and in the absolute demonstration of personal 
immortality. Life would be exalted and en- 
nobled. As heaven is a condition, and not 
a place, it is entered simply by the achieve- 
ment of that spirituality which fits one for 
its diviner air, and enables him to affirm: 
" Thou hast made known to me the ways 



Across the World I Speak to Thee. 137 

of life; Thou shalt fill me full of joy with 
Thy countenance." Thus shall life be radiant, 
joyful, and abound in spiritual energy, and 
into its daily experiences shall enter the King 
of Glory. 



THE END. 



A. Beautiful Betrothal and Wedding Gift. 
THE 

Lover's Year-Book of Poetry. 

A Collection of Love Poems for Every Day in the Year. 
By HORACE P. CHANDLER. 



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These two beautiful volumes, clad in the white garb which is emblematic of 
the purity of married love as well as the innocence of childhood, make up a series 
unique in its plan and almost perfect in its carrying out. It would be impossible 
to specify any particular poems of the collection for special praise. They have 
been selected with unerring taste and judgment, and include some of the most 
exquisite poems in the language. Altogether the four volumes make up a 
treasure-house of Love poetry unexcelled for sweetness and purity of expression. 
Transcript, Boston. 

Mr. Chandler has drawn from many and diverse wells of English poetry of 
Love, as the list for any month shows. The poetry of passion is not here, but 
there are many strains of Love such as faithful lovers feel. — Literary Worldy 
Boston. 

We do not hesitate to pronounce it a collection of extraordinary freshness and 
merit. It is not in hackneyed rhymes that his lovers converse, but in fresh 
metres from the unfailing fountains. — Independent, Neiv York. 

Mr. Chandler is catholic in his tastes, and no author of repute has been 
omitted who could give variety or strength to the work. The children have never 
been reached in verse in a more comprehensive and connected manner than they 
are in this book. — Gazette, Boston. 

A very dainty and altogether bewitching little anthology. For each day in 
each month of two years (each series covering a year) a poem is given celebrating 
the emotions that beset the heart of the true lover. The editor has shown his 
exquisite taste in selection, and his wide and varied knowledge of the literature of 
English and American poetry. Every poem in these books is a perfect gem of 
sentiment; either tender, playful, reproachful, or supplicatory in its meaning; 
there is not a sonnet nor a tyric that one could wish away. — Beacon, Boston. 

"The selections," says Louise Chandler Moulton, "given us are nearly all 
interesting, and some of them are not only charming but unhackneyed." — 
Herald, Boston. 

A collection of Love poems selected with exquisite judgment from the best 
known English and American poets of the last three centuries, with a few trans- 
lations. — Home Journal, Boston. 

There are many beautiful poems gathered into this treasure-house, and so 
great is the variety which has been given to the whole that the monotony which 
would seem to be the necessary accompaniment of the choice of a single theme 
is overcome. — Courier, Boston. 

The selections are not fragments, but are for the most part complete poems. 
Nearly every one of the poems is a literary gem, and they represent nearly all 
the famous names in poetry. — Daily Advertiser, Boston. 

Selected with great taste and judgment from a w T ide variety of sources, and 
providing a body of verse of the highest order. — Commercial A dvertiser, 
Buffalo. 



Sold by all booksellers. Mailed on receipt of price, post* 
paid, by the publishers. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
EIGHTEENTH THOUSAND. 

THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL. 

(FIRST SERIES.) 

By LILIAN WHITING. 

J6mo, Cloth* Price, $J.OO. White and Gold, $K25* 

» 

No one can read it through without feeling himself the better and richer and 
happier for having done so. — The Independent. 

There is in its pages such a strong assertion of the possible supremacy of the 
spiritual over the physical if only the effort is made ; such an affirmation of the 
happiness which results from such a supremacy ; such an inspiration to all who desire 
to live the higher life ; and withal an optimism that, in this day and generation of 
pessimism, is above and beyond all things refreshing and helpful, it is no wonder that 
struggling humanity gives such a work warm welcome. — Toledo Blade. 

There is no sermonizing upon either right or wrong; she lives, and for the time 
causes us to live, in a world either actually or potentially beautiful. — Boston Budget. 

There is an agreeable unity in the essays. While varied and differenced, they 
are yet one in their theme and tenor, — the world beautiful which we create for ourselves 
and others by our generous and high-thoughted activities. The publishers have given 
these notable essays a worthy setting ; they have made a dainty and beautiful volume ; 
and no one can do a friend a better service than to get the book and send it to him 
without delay. — Prof. Louis J. Block, in the Philosophical Journal. 

The five essays that make up this volume are on that high plane of living and 
thinking for which Lilian Whiting has been remarkable from the dawn of her bright 
career. Few women have produced a book so full of the choicest ethical ideas set 
forth in language so pure and elevated that no right-minded person can fail to find a 
genuine attraction on every page. — Frances E. Willard. 

In "The World Beautiful" Lilian Whiting discusses, with clairvoyant cleverness 
and marked acumen, all the topics that engage the earnest thought of advanced, 
broad-minded men and women, and it is a hive of garnered sweets, nourishing and 
palatable. — JVew York Commercial Advertiser. 

I have only praise for the literary excellence and charm of the book. Lilian 
Whiting is surely an essayist of exceptional gift; and the passages of shrewd, worldly 
wisdom in her writing are often delightfully varied by paragraphs and pages full of 
the richest human tenderness. — Edgar Fawcett. 

Lilian Whiting feels the spiritual and intellectual side of life to be of supreme 
importance, and, what is more, shehas the power to make her readers agree with her. 
Her words raise us from the turmoil and dust of the week's conflict with the business 
side of life to a higher plane, where are peace and sunshine. It has often seemed to 
me a remarkable^ thing that a writer on the daily press should dare to present so 
constantly this spiritual view of life. Her success in doing so shows that there is a 
demand for reading of this sort. — Florence Howe Hall, in a Lecture. 

"The World Beautiful" is a book full of spirituality and optimistic faith, sum- 
moning the reader, on every page, to high endeavor and noble, unselfish living, and 
echoing from title to finis-page the words of St. Paul: "All things work together for 
good to them that love God; " "Rejoice alway; again I say unto you, rejoice." — 
The Watchman. 



At all Bookstores. Prepaid, on receipt of price* 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts 1 Brothers Publications. 
EIGHTH THOUSAND. 

THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL 

(SECOND SERIES). 

By LILIAN WHITING, 

Author of " The World Beautiful " and "From Dreamland Sent." 
J6mo. Cloth. Price, $J.OO. White and Gold, $J.25. 



Rarely does a book appear more rich in thought, suggestive, help- 
ful, practical, unique, and forcible in its lessons for daily life. — J. W. 
Chad-wick. 

"Kind words and pure thoughts" is the text from which Lilian 
Whiting delivers some of the best lay sermons ever composed. The 
thousands of readers who were helped and uplifted in moral tone by 
The World Beautiful, first series, will be glad of this second in- 
stalment of essays that are more than essays; which combine a high 
level of literary achievement with a consecration of purpose and a hap- 
piness of style, method, and illustration rarely surpassed. To the 
weary, be it in well doing or in evil doing, this little volume will come 
like a reviving draught, instilling courage, inspiration, strength. — Con- 
cord Monitor. 

The book constitutes a noble appeal for higher and more conse- 
crated living. — Boston Advertiser. 

The second series of essays by Lilian Whiting, collected under the 
title of The World Beautiful, admirably sustains the fine intellectual 
quality and the ideal of spiritual aspiration which found such graceful 
expression in a former volume from the same hand. Miss Whiting in 
this later series dwells at length on the higher possibilities of friendship, 
and in connection with this theme discusses the determination of social 
conditions, the art of conversation, the charm of atmosphere, the force of 
love as a redemptive agency, the virtues of self-control and pleasant 
speech, and the supreme necessity of an elevated outlook, in adjusting the 
mind to the experiences of external life. In a concluding chapter the 
author touches upon the potentialities of the unseen world, and sets forth 
with contagious earnestness the doctrine that " immortality is a species of 
conquest in spiritual domain." If, in the course of this discussion, Miss 
Whiting draws freely upon the occult and the mystic, it must be confessed 
that she makes effective use of them in the way of pertinent illustration. 
— Beacon. 

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
THIRD EDITION. 

ffxorn Breamlanb Sent 

A Volume of Poems* By Lilian Whiting, author of 
"The World Beautiful/* Covet design by Louise 
Graves* J6mo* Cloth* Price* $J*25* 



Many of Miss Whiting's verses are permeated with the longing, the loneliness, 
and the wonder of one who looks with chastened heart and seeking eyes after those 
of her beloved who have passed into the world invisible; but her tears always form 
prisms for the rainbow of hope, and in her saddest songs there are notes of faith and 
healing. — L. A. C. 

This yerse gives the keynote of the stanzas throughout the volume. They are 
replete with poetic feeling and tender sentiment, musical in diction, and chaste in 
expression. If the feeling comes over us as we read them that they are little more 
than echoes of grander work, we must admit that they are very sweet echoes, and quite 
well worth listening to. — Inter-Ocean. 

The verses have a warmth of feeling in their direct appeal to emotional sympathy 
that is sure to find a responsive chord in the hearts of all those readers who value 
poetry, not for its technical perfection, but for the manner in which it voices the joys 
and sorrows of every-day life and those aspirations which, at favored moments, tend 
toward the higher ideals of personal conduct. It is rare, indeed, that one comes upon 
a volume wherein the finer feminine qualities are so artlessly made 'evident. It has 
the personal note, and that note is always fine and true. — The Beaco7i. 

A dainty little volume of dainty little poems is "From Dreamland Sent," by 
Lilian Whiting, and worthy the pen of the author of" The World Beautiful." Those 
who have read her other books and writings will know what to expect in this volume 
of poems. They are mostly poems of the heart, of love, of sympathy, and affection. 
Lilian Whiting is by nature > a poet, whether she writes in prose or verse, and her 
verses are flowing and melodious. Repeated expressions of praise are not needed. — 
Boston Sunday Times. 

While none of them can be classed among really great poems, yet there is a 
sweetness and a charm about many of them that will linger in the memory like strains 
of music. They look on the bright side of life, and are full of hope and faith and 
courage. — The A dvance. 

Miss Lilian Whiting's poems are notable for the beautiful thoughts which they 
embody, for the exquisite taste with which these thoughts are treated, and for the 
sweet expressiveness of the words in which they are dressed. Her verse is like a bit 
of sunlit landscape on a May morning; it carries one's mind away from stress and 
turmoil and asserts a suggestion of peace and rest, — not that peace which comes in 
the evening of life, as the result of work well done, but that peace which stands 
unperturbed in the midst of struggle, the operation of a quiet mind fixed on permanent 
things. — Boston Herald. 

In this little book Lilian Whiting has offered to the world about seventy bits of 
verse, graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the human heart. — 
Independe?it. 

These beautiful brief poems, inscribed to Kate Field, all have a meaning and a 
purpose ; they are artistic in form and finish, full of genuine inspiration. — Woman's 
Journal. 



Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by the publishers, 
ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



THE WEDDING GARMENT, 

a Cale of i&e life to Come* 
BY LOUIS PENDLETON. 



16mo. Cloth, price, $1.00. White and gold, $1.25. 



tl The Wedding Garment " tells the story of the continued existence of a young 
man after his death or departure from the natural world. Awakening in the 
other world, — in an intermediate region between Heaven and Hell, where the 
good and the evil live together temporarily commingled, — he is astonished and 
delighted to find himself the same man in all respects as to every characteristic ot 
his mind and ultimate of the body. So closely does everything about him 
resemble the world he has left behind, that he believes he is still in the latter 
until convinced of the error. The young man has good impulses, but is no saint, 
and he listens to the persuasions of certain persons who were his friends in the 
world, but who are now numbered among the evil, even to the extent of following 
them downward to the very confines of Hell. Resisting at last and saving him- 
self, later on, and after many remarkable experiences, he gradually makes his way 
through the intermediate region to the gateways of Heaven, — which can be found 
only by those prepared to enter, — where he is left with the prospect before him 
of a blessed eternity in the company of the woman he loves. 

The book is written in a reverential spirit , it is unique and quite unlike any 
story of the same type heretofore published, full of telling incidents and dramatic 
situations, and not merely a record of the doings of sexless "shades" but of 
living' human beings. 

The one grand practical lesson which this book teaches, and which is in 
accord with the divine Word and the New Church unfoldings of it everywhere 
teach, is the need of an interior, true purpose in life. The deepest ruling pur- 
pose which we cherish, what we constantly strive for and determine to pursue as 
the most real and precious thing of life, that rules us everywhere, that is our ego, 
our life, is what will have its way at last. It will at last break through all dis- 
guise ; it will bring all external conduct into harmony with itself. If it be an 
evil and selfish end, all external and fair moralties will melt away, and the man 
will lose his common sense and exhibit his insanities of opinion and will and 
answering deed on the surface. But if that end be good and innocent, and there 
be humility within, the outward disorders and evils which result from one's 
heredity or surroundings will finally disappear. — From Rev. Joh?i Goddard s 
discourse, July i, 1S94. 

Putting aside the question as to whether the scheme of the soul's develop- 
ment after death was or was not revealed to Swedenborg, whether or not the 
title of seer can be added to the claims of this learned student of science, all this 
need not interfere with the moral influence of this work, although the weight of 
its instruction must be greatly enforced on the minds of those who believe in a 
later inspiration than the gospels. 

This story begins where others end ; the title of the first chapter, " I Die," 
commands attention ; the process of the soul's disenthralment is certainly in har- 
mony with \Uiat we sometimes read in the dim eyes of friends we follow to the 
very gate of life. " By what power does a single spark hold to life so long . . . 
this lingering of the divine spark of life in a body growing cold? " It is the 
mission of the author to tear from Death its long-established thoughts of horror, 
and upon its entrance into a new life, the soul possesses such a power of adjust- 
ment that no shock is experienced. — Boston Transcript. 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



The Aim of Life. 

^piatii Calks to goutis JRen ana SHomtn. 

By Rev. PHILIP STAFFORD MOXOM. 

One volume. !6mo. Cloth. 300 pages. Price, $1.00. 



Of this book, the New England Journal of Education says: "Under the 
title of The Aim of Life, Rev. Philip S. Moxom addresses to young people a 
series of plain, practical talks upon influences that are to be met, contended, or 
redeemed every day. The essays evince a keen yet sympathetic observation of 
young manhood and womanhood, and an appreciative regard for its foibles, the 
force of its environments, and above all, of its possibilities of achievement. That 
possibility of achievement and the means thereto derives a forceful significance 
from being made the subject of the first essay and the title of the book. Having 
thus laid stress on his principle the author forbears to lift up beautiful ideals in 
the hope that their intrinsic merit shall draw all men unto them, but rather he 
endeavors to incite the noble instincts that practical every-day life must either 
foster or annul. Such titles as Character, Companionship, Temperance, Debt, 
The True Aristocracy, Education, Saving Time, Ethics of Amusement, Reading, 
Orthodoxy, show the scope of the theme, which if varied in expression, is one 
throughout all. The essays are not sermonic; they emphasize the power of 
Christianity; they recognize at the same time the power of personality. Christian 
ethics expressed in plain, forcible language, and innocent of didacticism, young 
people always appreciate. Such are Dr. Moxom's essays, originally given to the 
public as addresses to young people in Boston and Cleveland. Now their pub- 
lication, in convenient form, it is to be hoped, seals their value with permanency." 

The Independent says: "Of course it is a good book for young people to 
read, especially in the view given of character as the supreme result of life." 

The Review of Reviews says : " The chapters are marked by a high moral 
purpose and a direct, vigorous utterance." 

The N. Y. Tribune says : " But he presents the old truths in such a vivid 
and picturesque way, clothing his thoughts, moreover, in such forcible and ner- 
vous English, that the most apathetic reader will be stimulated by a perusal of the 
thirteen chapters that compose the volume." 

The Springfield Republican says : " They have a degree of attractiveness 
quite uuusual in volumes of homileiics." 

The Outlook says : " The scholar's hand is visible on almost every page, and 
the way in which etymology is made to yield illustration and exposition of the 
leading ideas of the successive addresses is both a noticeable literary merit and 
extremely effective as a method of instruction." 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



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